After sampling (way too) many rpg systems, solo and collective, and two in particular, I’m more or less done with the Beowulf Action Resolution Framework.
It ends up as yet another of the personal variants that are popular in some corners of the Old School Revival community. Not necessarily games in their own right, or even particularly original, they’re basically collections of slight modifications and “house rules”.
OSR is, again, a lineal descendant of our AD&D, with the basics being a collection of stats that define a character, and a combat system based on rolling d20 against a target number, whether that is called Armor Class, Difficulty Rating, or whatever.
Most, but by no means all, OSR systems use the original AD&D stat set: STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA. Some of them shuffle them around a little, or change things like Charisma to Appearance, but that stuff’s basically just cosmetic.
Sometimes they’ll add a couple like Speed, Luck, or some such, or maybe take a few away, so you just have STR, DEX, CON and INT.
Whatever. We all know what’s going on.
But then you have those that really try to redefine stats:
PhysiquePrecisionLogicEmpathy
SwiftnessSpiritVigorResilience
FortitudeMightGuileSwiftWits
As you can see, these stats may or may not map back to SDCIWC, depending on how much you tilt your imagination.
Those last two are particularly interesting, as they come from games produced by the same team, and otherwise using the same game mechanics. TF? So if the same creators alter things to suit the particular game…
Ah. Gotcha. I think.
Going back to early BARF R&D, then, we have a set of values that we “agree” define a character, and a system of game mechanics that can use those values to resolve a story.
Recently I came across an OSR variant that should have been self-evident to me a while ago. OSR usually resolves combat and skill checks with 1d20 vs AC or Difficulty. In this recent variant, if you want the Strong/Weak/Miss model, you roll 2d20 vs the target number, and then evaluate if those dice are over, under or equal to the target number.
(I also went back to the original AD&D text for a refresher. Based on the old to-hit tables, did you realize that a 1st level fighter only has about a 40% chance of hitting AC 10? And an 8th level fighter still has a 20% chance of missing AC 10?)
Anyway, I’ve decided to split my dev effort. I’m going to finish BARF up as an OSR-adjacent system. Then I want to pursue the Tarot-based system I was kicking around, as well as Mournwind Manor, which will probably be a journaling or resource-management game. I need to do a little actual scholarship in game theory, but that’ll come.
I’ll work up a draft of the new BARF rules and let you know. The only thing I want to highlight here is the stat collection I’ve settled on. In keeping with the “B” theme of the Beowulf Action Resolution Framework, those stats are:
BrainsBrawnBalanceBodyBreathBeyond
Feel free to map these to wherever you want.
BARF treats skills a little differently, and has a variant of a luck/karma pool I’ve seen and liked in other systems. But all of that will be in the rules.
The online TTRPG community is very open-source-oriented. Literally thousands of ppl regularly give away/share games, supplements, variants, etc. Eventually it might be a gas to throw BARF into the hat, but other than codifying my own house rules, that’s the only ambition I have for it.