Thursday, March 18, 2021

Horror osr rpg

 So in the ttrpg community there is a group of rpgs under the label osr (old school revolution), these rpgs are based around emulating the feel and mechanics of dnd 1e and 2e but with more polish and better rules. More specifically these rpgs emphasis player skill, deadly combat, dungeon delving, and randomness, these goals lead to a particular play style and feel (dungeon delving) but I think that osr style games can be used for more than just this, I think that these rules would also work well for horror games, particularly for found footage horror like slenderman, Local58, or Siren Head.

I was inspired to do this by this video.


So I am going to start off by talking about the stats as they are usually one of the most important things in a rpg. In any rpg the stats should emphasis a certain way to play and for this rpg we want to emphasis those aspects of player skill, deadly combat, horror, and exploration.

Firstly you are going to be encountering monsters and these monsters will be deadly but it would be boring to just automatically die so we need a stat to represent that. This will be your resilience which gives you more health and lets you survive for longer.

Secondly the characters will also want to fight against the monsters now usually in horror like Slenderman you can't fight against the monster so this is more going to be used for fighting against other people. This stat will be vigor, this is used to attack both at range and melee, it is also used as your physical might and strength.

Thirdly in these story's players are often searching for clues and trying to figure out mystery's so there should be some stat relating to that but it would be boring if you just rolled and if you got high enough you would figure it out so instead this stat gives you a higher chance to get clues as to what is going on but it should never give you everything. This stat will be intuition and when you roll it it can give you hints to help you out.

fourthly often characters will become frightened and mentally worn down, and though madness and insanity are more apart of lovecraftian horror rather than the found footage horror I am going for I still feel that it dose have its place in this genre. This stat will be called reason, it is used to shake off fear, madness, and other mentally degrading things.

you roll 3d6 for each stat, that number gives you a modifier, you just note down the modifier not the number used to get it. 

3-4: -3
5-6: -2
7-8: -1
9-10: 0
11-12: +1
13-14: +2
15-16: +3
17-18: +4


Tests
Tests are always made against a difficulty of 10 and are rolled with a d20.

Modifiers 
Rather than modifying the d20 roll you modify the difficulty, this makes it so that you get to do the minimum math possible, you just have to compare a d20 to a number.

Now I am going to end with classes.

So I only got 2 ideas for classes at the moment but I will probably add more.

Some general class stuff, the max level is 5, you are not a superhero. Secondly you do not roll for health but gain a static amount modified by your resilience, your health is also very low as in this genre a few blows will kill you.


The investigator

As a investigator you are adept at finding things that others could not.

Class health: 1 + resilience (min of +1)
perceptive and smart: you can automatically succeed on a number of intuition tests to find clues equal to your investigator level, this refreshes after you rest


The Survivor

As a survivor you have seen things and you continue to live through force of will.
Class health: 3 + resilience (min of +1)
adrenaline: you have a number of adrenaline charges equal to your level, you can spend a charge to heal 2 health, you may also spend 2 charges when you would be reduced to 0 health to be reduced to 1 instead.


Ok I guess I am not ending with classes, these are some miscellaneous rules

Resting
you rest when you spend a few days doing nothing, usually 4 or 5.

dying
when you take damage at 0 health make a resilience test, if you fail you die, if you succeed you lose 1 in resilience or vigor and you take a appropriate injury or the injury that would be the worst possible thing at the time, some ideas for injury's are below

broken hand: you can't hold something in that hand, you drop what you were holding with your hand
broken leg: you need to limp, most things can catch you, if both legs are broken you must crawl, if both hands are also broken you can't move
great chest blow: the wind gets knocked out of you, you can't do anything for the next d6 turns not even talk

If you have any ideas for classes or anything else I would be happy to hear it.

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