I did a precursory scan (read: “I googled it”) and did not find any gritty, simulationist rules of dehydration or starvation. I’m looking for something that is not too complicated to keep track of on the side, but realistic enough to motivate the players to pay attention.
This is a set of mechanics to represent personality and its change over time in terms of some abstract game mechanics. As it is presented it will function with all editions of D&D, but could easily be modified to fit just about any RPG system. This system is not meant to replace role playing. The idea is to provide a context to define a character’s personality to other players, as well as a way to have a character’s personality have some effect on other mechanical elements in a game. This system is largely inspired by the traits and passions from the Pendragon system. read more »
The great Buddha of gaming, Jeff Rients, once posed a form of gaming called “retro-stupid” which is comprised of using older systems (or systems that feel older) and incorporating them in ways that don’t take themselves seriously. Mutant Future is such a game. If you take HackMaster as your core and dip it in a coating of Mutant Future, hopefully you come away with something akin to a Reese’s Cup of retro-stupid.
I played a game of Aces & Eights at Origins this year. I thought it had some neat elements to it, but I decided that the initiative system was a little fiddly and I would need a little time to fit it into my standard groove of gaming. I particularly liked the crunch of the character creation system. There was a chart for nearly everything, but it was augmented with points so that you could pay for a re-roll, or pay even more to straight up select something off of the charts. The kind gentleman running the game (who’s name escapes me, although he was part of the Kenzer demo crew,) talked very shortly about the new HackMaster using a very similar system. The wild west has served as an occasional tryst for me but never been my fictional home. Swords and sorcery, however, is a core of my tabletop subsistence.
