ROLE PLAYING GAME RULES

 

During any role-playing session, game play essentially comprises:

 

  • Descriptive Narrative: “You are walking along a narrow stone corridor…”
  • Decision Making: “The corridor branches left and right”
  • Dialogue: “A warrior in armor stands before you ‘What do you want?’ they ask”

 

Action and actual Game dynamics and Rules only come into play when a character attempts to do something:

 

  • Vs The World: “The corridor is blocked by a warped wooden door, jammed shut”

– a character attempts to shove it open…

 

  • Vs Another Character: “The warrior in armor swings their fist at you…”

– the character attempts to Evade the blow

 

In which case only two things matter:

 

  • How good are they at what they’re attempting?

 

  • How hard is what they’re attempting?

 

OR

 

  • How good is their opponent at what they’re doing?

 

What’s their LEVEL OF ABILITY?

What’s the LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY?

OR – What’s their Opponent’s LEVEL OF ABILITY?

 

IN CHAOS RPG:

THESE LEVELS OF ABILITY WITH SKILLS AND LEVELS OF DIFFICULTY

ARE RATED ARBITRARILY FROM 1 to 10

 

where 3 is AVERAGE for Human Beings and 8-10 is considered SUPERHUMAN

(In Ability or Level of Difficulty)

 
(click to embiggen)

 

THIS IS ALSO THE NUMBER OF DICE TO BE ROLLED WHEN ATTEMPTING TO DO ANYTHING AND THE NUMBER OF DICE THE WORLD (The DM) OR YOUR OPPONENT WILL ROLL AGAINST YOU

 

FOR EXAMPLE:

  • Vs The World: “The corridor is blocked by a warped wooden door, jammed shut”

– a character attempts to shove it open…

 

All that matters is  – How good are they at shoving doors? Vs How badly stuck is this door right now?

 

In this instance – what’s their Level of STRENGTH?

  

Let’s say they are ABOVE AVERAGELY Strong; 4 – They Roll 4 DICE

 

The door, for its part, is only averagely stuck/difficult to shove open, but the floor is a little slippery, so-

ABOVE AVERAGELY DIFFICULT: 4  

 

The World (the DM) Rolls 4 DICE

 

If they roll higher the door groans opens

if the World rolls higher – it doesn’t budge

 

 

A ROLL OF ALL 6s CAN BE CONSIDERED A FLUKE, A CRITICAL SUCCESS

A ROLL OF ALL 1s CAN BE CONSIDERED A FUMBLE, A CRITICAL FAILURE

 

AND THAT’S BASICALLY IT

THIS ALGORITHM IS ADAPTED TO THE SITUATION AT HAND

 

 

FOR EXAMPLE:

 

  • Vs Another Character: “The warrior in armor swings his fist at you…”

– the character attempts to Evade the blow

 

How good are they at Evading blows Vs How good is the warrior at dealing them?

Let’s say the warrior is very effective – highly skilled at punching people –

Their SKILL of STRIKE/PARRY is HIGH: 5 – they roll 5 DICE

The character has only ABOVE AVERAGE EVADE SKILL – they roll 4 DICE

If the warrior rolls higher – they have hit the player-character

otherwise they EVADED the blow

Things such as weapons used, armor and injury caused are dealt with in a similar way.

What’s the LEVEL of INJURY caused Vs the LEVEL of PROTECTION afforded by the armor 

or Vs the character being injured’s LEVEL of ENDURANCE? 

Average, High, Very High and so on.

The ALGORITHM is at the core of everything