Savage Donjon Squad

[Simon C]

"Savage Donjon Squad" is a mashup of Clinton Nixon's "Donjon", with Jason Morningstar's "Dungeon Squad".  I used a few ideas from "Savage Worlds" as well, mostly so I could add "Savage" to the title. 

A friend of mine and I were planning on playing a game.  I wanted to show off some non-traditional ideas, and scratch my fantasy itch, but we didn't have time (or enough d20s) for full-blown Donjon.  So I sat down, and hammered out a very basic game that combined the simplicity of Dungeon Squad with the player-empowerment of Donjon.  Savage Dungeon Squad was the result.  We played, and had a blast.

Rob was really enthused by the quick-and-dirty approach, and didn't want to fuss around with any deep character stuff, so he made "Maximum Barbarian Man", a Conan clone.  My prep consisted of writing "A smell of roasting meat leads to a cave".  I basically winged conflict resolution.  We had a system for determining who won conflicts, and which dice to roll, but in terms of setting stakes, framing conflicts, statting up NPCs, and so on, I basically made it up.  I'd recently played "The Mountain Witch", which I think does this really well, so I was fairly heavily influenced by that.  The degree by which you win a conflict lets you make up "facts" about the setting, related to the conflict.  Rob hadn't really played a game like this before, but he took to it really well.  I think we had pretty similar visions of what would be cool, which meant we could build off each-other's narrations well.  We discovered that the world was riddled with the ruins of an ancient civilisation of Giants, who dabbled in necromancy and worshipped dark gods. 

What I really enjoyed about the game was how it was really an engine for exploring a setting, without any front-loaded work from a GM.  As GM, it was really great for me to be able to discover new things about the world.  We played a two-player game, but I never felt as drained as I usually do with that setup.  I also felt empowered to add things to the game that I personally found exciting, rather than concentrating on Rob's fun.  Because of his narration power, Rob was able to take care of himself, ensuring that the game stayed relevant to his character, and to his interests. 

A couple of days later, we played again, this time with another player, Ben.  Ben hadn't played a P&P roleplaying game before, but he took to it really well, though I think he was a bit more conservative in his narration than Rob.  I was really satisfied with the end of the story though, in which Ben's character saved the day.  The game has a mechanic which I tried to make like a really pared down "Key" from TSoY.  For every scene in which you act in accordance with a (player defined) trait, you get a re-roll point.  Once per scene, if you're acting against the trait in a conflict, you get to roll an additional d20 (a phenomenal bonus).  Ben's character, whose trait was "obedient", was ordered to drop the sacred talisman he was carrying.  Instead he decided to use it to smash the lich's face in.  Disobeying the order, he got an additional d20, and rolled a nineteen.  His obedient character finally stood up for himself, and succeeded phenomenally because of it.  It was cool.

Since then, I've written down the rules, and codified a lot of what I did on the fly during play.  I consider the game like, 90% done, but I'd really appreciate some feedback on it.  A PDF is available at the RPG Bakery, here:

http://www.rpgbakery.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=23&page=1#Item_8

I'm especially interested in whether the text comes across clearly.  For 1.5, I'd really like to clean up the writing to make it crystal clear.  Some people have already commented on areas where it's not perfect.  Another issue is about whether I need to give so much advice on how to frame conflicts.  Part of the fun of play for me was in experimenting with the game to see what worked.  The rules as written tell you how to do what worked for me, but I worry that they're too restrictive.  Should I give more leeway?  Most of all, I just worry about the game's ability to produce a fun experience for people other than me.  If more people could playtest it, I'd be really grateful.

This is the first RPG I've ever finished, and it kind of took me by surprise.  I'm really proud of it.  I don't think it's the next big thing in roleplaying, but it's a game that I want to play.

[jag]

In general, it seems like a quick and clever game.  I haven't playtested it, but in scanning over the test i found myself slightly confused by Abilities.  First, they aren't mentioned anywhere in the text until they are stated as a known fact in page 2.  Second, the words "abilities" and "attributes" both look alike and are used interchangeably by several rpgs, so i wasn't always clear which one was being referred to.  It wasn't that your text wasn't accurate, it was that i had to think whenever i read one word to figure out what it meant.

I'd suggest renaming abilities to something like "traits" or "bonuses" or something else textually very different than "attributes".  Then i'd write a brief paragraph about them someplace before they were brought up for the first time.

[Simon C]

That's a very good point.  Thanks for mentioning it.  I think I used "attributes" to mean all of the things written on the character sheet, and "abilities" to refer to the two things made up by the player, but I do need to be clear about which word I'm using and where. 

Thanks,

Simon