Second post that is an adapted PDF of my stone age game. None of this is fully prescriptive, especially the action resolution mechanic. Thats just my preferred
Core Mechanics
Action Resolution
Under most circumstances you will not have to make a roll to perform an action. The GM (Genius Mundi, World-Soul) will rely on their understanding of how the world functions, your characters positive and negative traits to determine if you succeed or not.
However there are cases where there is an ambiguity in if success or failure is what would occur especially in person to person, or entity to entity circumstances.
In these circumstances roll 3d6.
If against another entity or active situation, then it also rolls a 3d6, possibly with advantages and disadvantages.
If against some passive object or circumstance (such as attempting to leap a gap), then this is rolled against a target number. If that number is exceeded, then it is a success, possibly with some additional benefit. If the target number exceeds the result, then it is a failure. If they exactly match, then a partial success, partial failure or some other ambiguous result may be the outcome.
In some cases multiple numbers can correspond to “matching”. In this case the target number is represented as a range of values, such as “9-12”. This means anything from 9-12 is a “match value.” This is usually the case for results with “degrees” of success. A 9-12 on foraging might bring an okay amount of food, but a 13 or higher will bring more.
If you have traits or skills that contribute to the action and they do not ensure success or simply allow the roll to occur at all, then you may gain dice of advantage.
This is represented by rolling additional dice, but only taking the highest 3 as your result. This biases the outcome by an increasing amount for each dice of advantage.
Disadvantage works the same, but you take the lowest three. Advantage and disadvantage cancel out, so if you have 2 dice of disadvantage and 3 of advantage, it is treated as you having only one dice of advantage.
Generally if you would have more than three dice of advantage that is probably a good sign you should simply succeed.
Similarly for disadvantage, more than three dice indicates the check should probably just be an automatic failure.
There are some cases where that might not be so, however, such as when two entities have significant advantage.
If the GM allows it, successes that have two results of six counted may be a greater success, and three even greater. Rolling higher than something by a certain multiple (i.e. rolling two or three times higher than required) may provide greater advantage.
If not using a target number, then range values can be used. Im fond of the following table, basically using the attribute bonus ranges from AD&D as a guide.
- 3: Worst result.
- 4-5: Worse result.
- 6-8: Bad result.
- 9-12: Average result.
- 13-15: Good result.
- 16-17: Better result.
- 18: Best result.
With context clarifying what qualifies under each range. "Average result" on foraging in a rain-forest might net decent amounts of food (result-8 meals worth perhaps?) while the same thing in a desert wont give anything. I use this as a guide for passive difficulty.
Any other modification to the action resolution system is not the baseline game, and is reflective of unique circumstances in the game world. Some things may flatly raise the size or amount of dice you roll in some circumstances, and some entities might be mighty enough to warrant such changes to their rolls.
You may become one such entity, with time.
Resource Management
Resource management can be difficult in some tabletop games. Thankfully, you are playing a game set in the ambiguously paleo-meso-neolithic era and will not be carrying around a backpack with 2 metric tonnes of resources.
Carrying resources is useful, and sometimes you will want to stockpile. For the most part however, you can forage for resources.
Fishing and hunting are similar.
You likely won't be able to stockpile massive amounts of resources, both due to spoilage and your mobile nature. Carrying around a week's worth of firewood is a Sisyphean effort.
Even so, certain skills will let you preserve certain resources (dried and salted/treated food for example). You will have limits to the amount you can carry and certain circumstances can cause spoilage (don't get the dried food wet unless you plan to spend time drying it after).
For every two kilos an animal weighs, you can gain one “meal” of food from it. Foraging and fishing will also bring in food, depending on the area. The less vegetation, the more you’ll have to rely on hunting, and vice versa.
Resources
The actual resources you will need to keep track of are
- Useful Food (Each character needs at least a meal per day or they start to become hungry. Two meals a day will slowly reverse the effects of hunger, but some starvation ailments will be “permanent” until you can fully recover over time.)
- Fresh Water (Each character needs two proper full drinks per day or they start to dehydrate. One full proper drink a day will give small maluses but wont kill you.)
- Firewood (Indicated in hours of fire time. The more you put on the brighter it will burn, but this can burn through them faster.)
- Artisan Materials (clay, hide, fabric, fibers, adhesive, wood, flint, stone, bone etc)
- Medicinal Substances (Measured by effective dosage)
- Psychoactive substances (Measured by effective dosage. Minimal, Low, Powerful, Heroic and Extreme, for hallucinogens.)
- This is about every relevant resource, but others might be possible. Trade goods? Shiny stuff?
Time Management
There are four primary temporal scopes of play. The Gm keeps track of the moon (month), time of day, day in the moon, phase of the moon, season, time of day, and so on.
- Frantic Time: When something happens that requires immediate action. Time is measured in “rounds” (~3-6 second intervals). Characters can generally take two actions (movement, attacking, defending, whatever). This is combat, chases, etc.
- Exploration Time: When PCs are taking their time to explore an area, figure out what is around, forage, fish, and so on time is measured in “Exploration turns” of roughly 10 minutes. Thus, “Exploration actions” (like foraging) take more time to bear fruit (often literally).
- Travel Time: When PCs are traveling long (ish) distances, time is measured in “Hours” or “Travel Rounds”. Each hour there is a chance of something happening, a chance to recheck directions, and so on. These can be interrupted (something can happen in the middle, they can choose to explore a local area), but this is the rough idea.
- Downtime: Perhaps the PCs are choosing to prepare long term for something. To stockpile food, to spend a large time foraging to accrue large amounts of food. During downtime, time is measured in suns (days, 24 hours), moons (months, 30 suns), seasons (3-6 months depending on the environment) and cycles (years 12 months).
Note that years are measured as 12 months of 30 days, giving 360 days to a year. This is only notable in that the life expectancy of beings is a few more years over the course of a human lifespan, though is still the same amount of time. This is just to make sure natural cycles are a little bit easier to keep track of on the GM side.
Travel
Space and location is represented in “Zones”.
Zones are not biomes or biotypes. One forest will be split into multiple zones.
The exact spatial dimensions of the zones are not totally set in stone, but “Horizons” is the general measurement at this scale (roughly three miles or 4.8 kilometers in a given direction, the rough distance a horizon is away from an average observer on flat land, making a horizon six miles, ~9.6 kilometers, across).
Rather, the size and the difficulty of the zone is represented by “Travel time” and rough dimensions given in “Horizons”. Remember the average human walking speed is about 4.8 kilometers an hour, and a bit faster based on health. Terrain of course influences this.
Zones can have multiple points of interest scattered throughout them. These almost always have consistent locations. Distance between these points of interest is given in horizons, though characters can wander between them and find other points of interest.
Combat
3d6 attack vs 3d6 evasion, blocking/parrying, etc. with modifications as described under action resolution.
Failure is a failure of the attack to connect, due to having been dodged, blocked, whatever.
A tie is that some consequence happens to both, a success in exchange for small consequence determined by the foe or they succeed with some complication described by you. Really depends.
A success is a hit. Damage is whatever a “hit” is for whatever weapon you use, and is descriptive. The defender gets to choose where they were hit.
Twice or more the defender's roll is a direct hit. Either you get to choose where or the defender chooses and the damage is even worse.
Thrice or more the defenders roll is a critical hit. Essentially both options of a direct hit happen, with increased effect the greater the difference.
The actual severity of the damage depends on the weapon and the defender. If it has a tough enough hide, a character of average strength may not be able to harm it (unless they strike a weak point, such as in the mouth).
Where and how you can hit depends on the weapon. Slashing and bludgeoning weapons struggle to target small weak points or exploit them.
Damage and other Terrible Things
Damage, Illness, hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation and so on are all treated as localized status effects. They are descriptive, and their effects are based on eyeballing a real world-ish consequence of the effects at that particular location on the body.
They can of course be treated with the right medicines (or even magic).
Hunger causes a gradual subtraction of your rolls, and eventually reduces some positive traits semi-permanently if it's too long.
Thirst outright removes one of the dice from your action pool after each day, unless you have some trait that reduces it's effect on you. Once the pool runs out you die.
Sleep deprivation reduces all capabilities and acts as an altered state of mind.
These can all be represented by "clocks" if the GM wants, with "segments" filled per missed meal, drink, sleep session, illness/curse progression, would exacerbation etc. This isn't player facing however.
Altered States
Important to magic and mysticism are altered states of mind/consciousness.
These are split into roughly five ranges of effect, listed as follows with an example. Inspired largely by pariah and this system.
- Weak: A minimal effective dosage. Barely any effect besides some descriptive shift and possibly some very minor malus to regular functioning.
- “You feel like your emotions are being carried on a tide. You feel energetic, and the world seems more vibrant.”
- Moderate: A mild shift to perception and sensation. Generally the level you can feel “energies” and “tones” of spiritual presences. Definite but minor maluses.
- “Geometry twists and flows in the grass and dirt, shapes and angles forming and intersecting. The green of the grass and the brown of the dirt feel even more vibrant. Around the mysterious idol, the geometry seems densest and most active.”
- Powerful: A powerful shift. Generally allows perception of spirits and brief glimpses into the otherworlds. Major shift to all perceptions and sensations.
- “Colorful geometric forms twist and shift across your vision, obscuring your vision of the world. Colors flow and twist in accordance to principles you can only guess at. Before you, a towering bestial figure wearing a blank mask tilts it's head curiously.”
- Heroic: The required dose to fully shift your perspective to another realm for a time. What you take to go on spiritual/mystical adventures/”Trips”.
- “The tent blows away in an impossible wind, those who have not taken the sacred herb seem entirely unaware. The camp seems to disappear under the wind and flowing leaves. An impossibly titanic forest now stretches above you, branches and roots growing in geometric lattices. Things dance and sing through the branches impossibly far above. What will you do?”
- Extreme: A dangerous level for when you want to skip the journey and cut straight to the heart of a realm. Often has dangerous side effects even if the other levels don't.
- “A swirling maelstrom of transforming life. That is your entire reality, all you remember, all you perceive. You may be able to act, if only in a mental sense.”
