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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Using D&D as a Generic RPG Template




I used to do this all the time when I was a teenager. We'd decide some setting or genre was a passing fancy, I'd whip up some quick rules, pretty much on the fly, and away we'd go! Funny thing is, now that I am older and I am trying to write this up for people who won't be sitting at the table with me for me to make a quick judgment call, it's a wee bit harder.

Anyway, I am planning on doing some alpha testing with my family tonight after supper and we'll see at least some of what needs tweaking.

So far saving throws vs lots of things and cover based AC bonuses are looking good. Mission objective based experience points and combat based experience points are looking like how the XP system is going to work.

I have a few ideas that I am going to include as optional, because they draw us away from an even compatibility with B/X or LL, but present them straight out of the gate anyway, just because they enhance the feel I am going for; for instance my HP vs CON as wounds plan, I think straight out lethality in a comic/TV serial version of WW2 should be for NPCs and Bad Guys.

I am also not sure how I can go about making it a rule, but I think it would be great if everyone played as a super clichéd member of the team, the southerner(From Georgia or Alabama, with a grandpa that fought with General Lee), the guy from New York City (usually Brooklyn or the Bronx, bonus points for Hell's Kitchen), the Texan (always a west Texas cowboy type), the scrappy Irish kid (usually from Boston), the European immigrant (his family came in the last generation, maybe from one of the antagonist countries causing tension in the squad), the mid-westerner (Tragically, this is always the nice blond kid that dies horribly to show what bastards the Nazis/Japs really are). Sometimes for diversity we throw in a Jew, a Mexican or an Indian, the rest of the country really is under represented.

Obviously for right now I am concentrating on Americans in Europe/North Africa, but this can easily be extrapolated for the Pacific theater or other nationalities too. I think a French resistance campaign could be a lot of fun too and the British invented Commando style warfare, so that could be cool too.

Fantasy/Supernatural are being considered as a default option, because every war has those kinds of ghost stories and Nazi Zombies are starting to crop up everywhere. Plus we all know from the Indiana Jones movies about the 3rd Reich's obsession with occult artifacts.

5 comments:

  1. Return to castle Wolfenstein :-)

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  2. The original DOS castle Wolfenstein top down PC game was one of the first computer games I played a lot. I remember always getting startled when the guys in the SS bullet proof vests came on screen and said "SS"; like they were end bosses for the level or something. I played that a lot my senior year of high school (1986-87) with my friend Jerry on his Tandy computer, it ran twice as fast as the IBM PC so all the timed stuff went really quick, but the bad guys also moved twice as fast!

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  3. This sounds really so, very, very cool. I can't wait for more reports on how it develops. You wouldn't know it from looking at my blog, but after fantasy, my second biggest gaming area is WWII.

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  4. I used to play a lot more WW II stuff myself. Time and moving a lot have weeded out my collection pretty hard. I sold a lot of my books and games on EBay when I was hard up for cash about eight or nine years ago. I still have a bunch of older WW II and WW II History magazines here somewhere, and I made sure to keep Up Front and Axis & Allies because they are pretty quick and easy.

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  5. I am pretty excited about this project, too. My goal is to run a Weird War 2 game someday.

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