Hit Dice Dungeons Initial Playtest - Version 0.1.1

What's going on here?

 I'm writing an RPG that spun out of the idea of using Usage Dice to track HP.

What changed from the original blog post?

Following on from my blog post where I outlined the basic idea, I developed it into an actual RPG system. Compared with that original idea, I fully abandoned any effects that modify the range of  numbers that cause the Die to step down, and locked it at 1-3 for all situations.

Where weapons in that original version shifted the range that stepped down, weapons for my first playtest instead dealt a static amount of damage to their target. For each point of damage, you roll your Hit Die once, stepping down for each failure. This also solves the problem that the original idea had of Hit Dice capping the worst case scenario of a powerful attack to stepping down a single time. With damage causing individual rolls, a powerful attack can now step down your die multiple times and kill you outright.

Armor also had to be changed (it could no longer shrink the 'threat range') and now lets you reroll a number of failed "damage rolls".

I wrote up a small handful of backgrounds, in the style of Electric Bastionland's failed careers or Troika! backgrounds, to run a playtest with one of my usual groups. My original intention was to also have GLOG style classes, but I both didn't finish them in time and also wanted to test the core systems before I started layering things on top.

The Playtest

My players rolled (off of my expansive d8 table) an Exiled Neriad, a Rat Catcher, and a Traveling Salesman. Very early on in the night the Traveling Salesman player asked if he could be a Minotaur, which seemed like an excellent idea and was immediately added to the background itself.

For the module, I ran Tomb of the Last Tyrant from Dissident Whispers (technically now the 7th Dissident Whispers module I've run, although this won't get the whole micro review treatment I usually do) with the possibility of spinning it out into a sandbox hexcrawl to keep testing the system as it develops.

I won't give a whole play report here, than than to highlight a few fun moments:

• Yeeting "serpent guards" off of rain slick cliffs.
• Taking advantage of thunder to pick off guards from the back of the group.
• Interrogating terrified cultists as to why they were called the Serpent Guard if none of them were actually snakes.

The main takeaways I got from running the game, and talking with the players afterwards, is that although none of us like "to hit" rolls having no roll when you make an attack and just waiting for the GM to roll the enemy's Hit Die to see how it went is pretty unsatisfying.

Changes Made

I've made two changes to the system I intend to test to try and address this. First, instead of weapons dealing a static number of damage, they have damage dice that get put through a filter. This is soft of halfway between Troika! damage tables, and the Scarlet Heroes damage system.

 This adds a bit of fiddly-ness to the game I would have liked to avoid, but it adds some agency to attacks and hopefully doesn't cause much frustration. One other benefit of this damage dice system is that it let me add my Living Grimoires magic system almost unchanged to Hit Dice Dungeons, which is nice.

The second thing being changed isn't actually a rule change as such, simply that when you attack an enemy you are the one to roll their Hit Die to see if they get injured. This is really just a perception thing, but I'm hoping it makes players feel more connected to the results of their actions.

A couple also small changes were made:

• Added a temporary advancement system (until I get those GLOG style classes off the ground) based on collecting accomplishments that would go into your Eulogy.
• Allowed clever, fun, or daring attacks to be "enhanced" (similar to Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland) by stepping up the die that would be rolled for the attack. I may switch this from stepping up the die to giving a +2 to the damage die roll, but we'll see how it feels in play.
• Added some guidance for how to track different equipment (the cowardly way of presenting three systems and letting the GM choose, hopefully I'll zero in on what works well to make a definitive statement).
• Added the concept of "Clock Dice" which is a blend of Macchiato Monsters encounter usage dice, BitD clocks, and Dungeon World fronts.

The Game Itself

 https://awkwardturtle.itch.io/hit-dice-dungeons

Check it out if you're interested, it's even got a character sheet! Expect things to change a ton as I get more playtesting and development in though.