Email Dungeon

Overview

A non-exhaustive set of RPG mechanics for turn-based online play.

Basic Workflow

1. The GM (or first poster) sets up a scenario.
2. Each player narrates how they respond to it.
3. The GM compiles all the responses, comes up with NPC responses, runs it through the resolution system and narrates a result.
4. Go back to 1 with the new scenario.

Assumptions

The rules presuppose a social dynamic that includes the following and probably will not work correctly if these are not the case:

• You're intending to play some kind of D&D-esque adventure roleplaying game with much travelling and fighting and monsters, but want something a bit more narratively oriented and don't want to count hitpoints or optimize damage output or whatever.
• All players are acting in good faith to enable the events of a shared fictive world with substantially similar genre/laws-of-narrative-physics expectations (or lack thereof); where that is not the case, the group can discuss and adjust as needed.
• Subject to the above, the players will be reasonably assertive in working to establish both their characters' actions and the immediate environment and their characters' background necessary for them, and the GM is willing to incorporate cues from the players towards this end and overrule only to preserve suspension of disbelief or to avoid an unresolvable contradiction.
• The GM has done minimal unilateral worldbuilding. An overall understanding of the themes and setting expectations and diegetic infrastructure are established, as well as the identities of many places and characters and things associated with them, but there is room to adapt to evolving gameplay. Here be dragons.

Turn Resolution

The basic roll is

• as many d6s as the stat
• take highest
• add bonus

1. Resolve ambiguities in favour of the lowest stat.
2. If another character is helping, use the higher stat between them. (Thus end the mass combat rules.)
3. All rolls are assumed to be opposed. If a roll has no obvious opposing character from which to get a stat, reconsider why you are rolling, and consider what kind of force or power is truly being opposed here, and have the GM make up a stat for that.
4. If for some reason a stat is zero or below, don't roll, just add the bonus.
5. The bonus is assigned at GM discretion (but never in favour of GM-controlled actors or opposition), up to +3, and may depend on any or more of the following:
   • subjective impression
   • how well the action fits that character's Virtues
   • how well the action engages story elements already established or external to the character
   • plausibility of the desired outcome

   If you want to go more fine-grained than 3, consider using dice with more sides.

Where feasible and playing in person, let each player roll one of the dice: if not enough dice, work something out or the GM rolls them all; if too many dice, work something out or the GM rolls the extras.

Results

If a roll wins, the winning character basically gets what they want: the lower the margin of victory, the more the GM may fudge the narration despite any controlling player's directions.

If the results are tied, both rolls lose.

If a roll loses, pick one of the following:

1. The actor is substantially prevented from doing the thing they were trying to do.
2. The actor succeeds in the task but the underlying goal is thwarted or changed: the princess is in another castle, the monsters' treasure just says "peace on earth", the whole attack was just a distraction to lure the PCs away from the real attack, the big bad was trying to stop something worse, whatever.
3. The actor succeeds in the task and substantially their underlying objective, but something has happened to make them believe that they have failed or that their objective has changed, and - until there is a clear and unavoidable digetic reason otherwise - their controlling player's decisions for the rest of the session must be based on this erroneous belief.

In any event, something must change so that no one can simply try the same thing again. The GM has full discretion over how diegetically long the result takes in order to effect this.

In doing all this the GM is directed to consider themselves a curator and compiler of the writings of the players and deference should be given to their narration even if none is given in the results. While storytelling skills are essential, under no circumstances should the GM be expected to serve as "the storyteller".

Injury

Every affected character rolls a number of dice equal to their lowest stat, then adds the margin of victory/subtracts the absolute margin of defeat with no bonus.

Injury should be limited to something proportional to both diegetic possibility and the players' stakes in initiating the fight: if they do not care if someone dies, then there is no limit.

1. If the result is 10 or above, that character avoids injury.
2. If the result is 5 or below, subject to any limits, the injury should be significant and life-altering.
3. If the result is 0 or below, assuming no limit applies, the character should be dead by the end of the scene.

Injury may be any lasting negative effect: destroyed or exhausted gear and supplies, or blocked escape routes, etc.

Each injury should do at least one of the following until taken away:

• reduce a die under certain situations (your bum leg gives out trying to climb to higher ground)
• prevent a specific action (Thrakoz the Cruel's fire lance last round welded your bullets together. cannot reload)
• negatively affect the outcome of a roll (you're smooth as butter until the barmaid suddenly narrows her eyes. 'Hey, aren't you that adventurer who...')

Butterflies

Each time a player gets a bonus of 3 (or whatever your standard maximum is) and loses a roll anyway, record it. That player now has a Butterfly that can be spent to alter a subsequent scene when it begins.

Upon spending a Butterfly, a player may add or change one element to the scene to their advantage, caused by that failure. Any causal chain, however convoluted, is acceptable, though the GM may interfere as needed to maintain background diegetic consistency. (Failing all else, or with the consent of the GM, Jungian synchronicity counts as causation.)

This change must not be so significant and relevant that it by itself basically resolves the underlying conflicts in the story.

Other situations

Non-combat: replace injury, if applicable, with other negative consequences which may or may not directly hinder the players' goals.

"GM-less" play: just before the roll, randomly or arbitrarily select one player to be the GM.

Not-really-opposed task checks: force the GM to articulate some diegetic reason why the task has a meaningful chance not to succeed, then narrate intended actions around that. If the GM still has doubts, roll against static TN 5 or whatever the GM eyeballs out.

Player Characters

Stats

Strength, Charisma, Wisdom: do not go below 1; must add up to 7.

• Strength is an approximate, holistic measure of how well and how effectively you move.
• Charisma approximates your best first impressions and delivery, all else being more or less equal. You will never convince someone on earth that up is down with a good Charisma check, but you might be able to convince them they might have an interest in giving the benefit of the doubt that at one particular time in the past the person you're advocating for might honestly have mistaken up for down.
• Wisdom approximates your character's conscientiousness, observation skills and past mistakes from which they learned anything. The kind of thing you might check for detecting traps or remembering if they might have a particular tool at hand that the players at the table would not have had the time or background to specifically mention. (My sheet says she has a 'toolbox'. How much history of the Martian Phoenix Dominion Order would she know? if it didn't occur to her to pack a #2 Robertson it's crowbar time...)

Gear

Write down 5 items.

Each "item" does not need to be a single discrete object. You can have, say, a brace of pistols and the ammo for it as a single entry - the important thing is that everything in one line item can all be comfortably carried at once and function for the same basic sort of task.

Diegetically of course you can have more stuff than this, but (unless you are deprived of them later) your access to these is more non-negotiable for advantage/disadvantage purposes. Otherwise, if it is at all reasonable for you to have had it on you without going out of your way to acquire it, roll Wisdom to see you have it with bonus/penalty or ad/disadvantage depending on contextual plausibility.

Everything Else

Any holes in backstory can be retconned as the game progresses.

Stats can be temporarily or permanently reduced by some injuries.

Every milestone, all PCs get 1 point to increase any 1 stat of the player's choice. What is a milestone? You should all know it when you see it.

Each PC should have 3 Virtues:

• Faith: your character believes in ___.
• Hope: your character has put their hope in the power of ___.
• Love: your character is lovingly devoted to, or is madly in love with, ___.

Town

An actual diegetic town or city, even a building may have several towns for mechanics purposes.

Each must have at least 1 shop and 1 NPC connected to it, and a forum and inn.

• Shop: any place where items are exchanged.
• Forum: any place where the characters gather by default.
• Inn: any place where the characters rest.

Sample Minimum Town

A small clearing in the woods with a rock in it.

• Shop/Forum: sometimes people leave graffiti or stashes of items on or by this rock.
• Inn: tents can be set up nearby though usually not right next to the rock (it feels a bit exposed).
• NPC: a reclusive disheveled man wanders about nearby, taking some items but occasionally sorting or repairing them.

NPCs

Get a big sheet. Map out the relationships between the NPCs based on the motivations outlined below. If this is visible to the players such that they obtain OOC information, the players should be trusted to play out dramatic ironies as appropriate.

NPCs may have some or all of the stats of PCs if the GM doesn't feel up to improvising on the spot later. A single NPC's combined stats should add up to 5, 7 or 12. An NPC's Virtues (if any) should be directed at PCs, an NPC or specific pre-established setting elements (which may be an abstract concept if the players have made it an issue during or shortly before play).

NPCs without Virtues defined should have 3 Drives: Kill, Fuck and Eat, directed at characters or setting elements as above. Make up particulars to establish exactly what each of these actually means.

Write down what the NPC will do that session if they are not stopped. It should be an attempt to fulfill one or more of their Drives, and its success or failure should change some relationships or infrastructure of the town.

Dungeon

Get a big sheet. Draw the rooms as the players encounter them. This should be visible to all.

If monsters continue pursuing the PCs out of the dungeon, keep doing more "dungeon" rooms as necessary representing areas in the path, forest, overcity, town, etc. beyond.

The GM may add a trap at any time, but until it is discovered every PC gets to roll at least once to detect it each time that PC comes into its presence.

Each room must have:

• at least 2 connections to at least 1 other room, not including dungeon entrances/exits;
• at least 2 areas with meaningfully different terrain; and
• at least 1 action point that, if triggered, will change the terrain types or exits, or something else in the fight.

With respect to the areas, at absolute minimum you can have the middle of the room and near the walls and corners; on the other extreme your terrain areas may be 2 rooms in 2 buildings a mile apart in a sniper battle. It is not necessary that there be any way to traverse between all areas within a room.

The identity and nature of the action point and the means of triggering it need not be made explicit to the players.

If the players use an action point in combat, they gain 1 die, or in any event must roll at least 3 dice, in whatever roll is accompied with that use.

No GM-controlled character may gain a mechanical advantage through an action point until it is discovered by the players. If a player asks, out of character, if something is an action point, the GM is to answer honestly.

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