[Part of the Party Time journal]
We've finally played my home brew tabletop campaign so I'll be posting here how things go. :)
Definitely "Forged in the Dark" (inspired by Blades in the Dark), this is a fiction first role playing game that only uses D6 to determine action results. A 6 means you did it, 4 or 5 means you did it but something bad happens, and 1 to 3 means you failed badly and something bad happens.
Unlike Blades I'm trying to restrict the number of dice to 1, unless you have advantage or disadvantage which adds a dice and the result taken is the higher (advantage) or lower (disadvantage). If things are wildly in their favor or against though, maybe through a good idea or through sacrifice I'll give them a third die. To find out if someone has an advantage or not just roll a d6 and see if it is higher than the number of stars against the relevant skill. My players can pick any skill within reason (and in the setting) and they can spend 10 XP to add a star next to them (or add a new skill) to a maximum of 5 stars.
Character wise they just get a name and a few boxes: 8 harm, 8 stress, 6 scars and trauma. Harm is physical damage, stress is mental damage or spent to re-roll, and exceeding either of those gives them a scar of trauma in which case they are out of the scene. If scars and trauma is full the character dies, but 6 is super generous I don't think anyone is going to die this way. I'll even let them split the damage out as they like [except in certain situations] and can just sacrifice items or NPC allies (per damage). That's intentional as my players are unlikely to take kindly to character death. :P
There's also an "age" track with 16 boxes, the first 4 being "prime" and the last 4 being "old". People in their prime have and advantage healing, and old people have a disadvantage in healing. That's taken during the more mechanical "rest" action in which each player can do two things. Rest as above, gather "supplies" (which I'm representing by tactile gold coins, but they actually represent anything so if they "need" something I can say, sure - you have that: for x number of supplies), or use said supplies for research or construction of whatever. Resting and traveling are the main ways in which time moves, with each season having 10 boxes - I roll a dice when "time passes" and (6) 3, (4 or 5) 2, or (1-3) 1 time unit is filled in. For ease of remembrance they all have the same birthday to age up.
Not that my game will span years anyway... BUT the magic system does. You cast spells, you AGE. The stronger the effect the worse off you are. You fill up your age you die. I feel this is more acceptable than "a monster killed you because it rolled better than you" as the player is willingly advancing towards their own end by continued casting. I think the magic system should balance itself out this way.
Healing harm and stress is the main way to get XP, while I might throw a few extra points for well played segments or good ideas. This does mean XP tracking is done by the GM (me) though, as I'm not going to award silly self harming characters with XP.
I think that covers most of it... on to the game!