When More is Less
More isn't more. Not when it comes to rules. More is less.
Simplicity is our philosophy. Yeah, we know. You’ve heard that before. Usually it surfaces in the paragraph before an RPG uses 17 pages to explain how to roll for agility. That’s not Dark War REBOOTED. There are only seven character Abilities in our game; Shooting, Melee, Dodge, Speed, Intelligence, Charisma, and Will. Early iterations of the game used agility and strength, but didn’t include shooting and melee. This caused problems with folks new to RPGs. “Now what dice do I roll when I shoot?” or, “What do I roll to dodge that bullet?” It just made sense to us to make the use of abilities as obvious as possible. What do you roll to shoot? Well, your Shooting dice, of course. Your Dodge dice are used when dodging, and Melee dice when you want to bash someone on the head.
That’s great, and a system that we are proud of. But golly, there’s no perception ability, no stealth, and horror upon horror, no driving skill. As a designer you have two choices. You can either list dozens of abilities, which necessitate gamers spending hours rolling up/designing characters, or just cut to the chase, decide what’s important, and get to the good stuff, i.e. playing the game. We choose to play the game. That decision does, however, necessitate that the GM use a bit of common sense. There is no perception ability, per se (it is a kicker). Nor is there a listening ability. So, as the GM, what do you do when Fred states, “I put my ear to the door and listen for anything weird.”? I’d recommend you ask them to roll their Intelligence dice. Or how about a character that attempts to leap from one rooftop to another? Isn’t that agility? Sure it is, but it’s also Speed and Intelligence. Hence, the GM can have said character roll a permutation of those dice.
And strength? Well in most cases, i.e. smashing through a door, strength will be a combination of your Will and Melee dice. If it’s brute strength that needs to be used, the GM should just make a call based on your character’s background. If you are a “fireplug of a man,” maybe you’ll roll 2D8 to lift the rear end of that small Fiat. If you are a small waif who specializes in magic, you might have a harder time. Then again, maybe you could blow it out of the way with a fireball or use Dark Control to tell the musclebound dude standing next to the car to push it.
“But what about driving those cars?” If you’re an adult, you know how to drive a car. And—we hate to break this to you—but unless your name is Kimi Räikkönen (look it up), you can’t drive any better than the person sitting next to you. So, if you want to drive the car, drive the car. If you want to run someone over in your car, the GM can have you roll Will (do you have the stomach for it?) or Intelligence (can you judge the angle you need to impact the hapless pedestrian?) dice. Or if someone is shooting at you in the car, the GM could subtract a die from their Shooting dice. After all, you’re in cover, right?
In short, Dark War REBOOTED includes the tools to handle any situation that we come up with in one heck of a lot of hours testing/playing the game. You just need a GM with imagination (not a difficult thing to find) and gamers with a little creativity, the more the better.
Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver. He is the creator of the Dark War universe, which includes two novels, Revelation and Retribution, several short stories, and the Dark War Rebooted Role-Playing and Skirmish game. He is the owner of Flying Pig Games as well as Tiny Battle Publishing the designer of the aliens-invade-Earth game Night of Man, the Communists invade South Vietnam game, '65, Lock 'n Load, World at War and several other games, as well as the publisher of Old School Tactical, and Armageddon War. Give them a try. I mean, what the hell?
Simplicity is our philosophy. Yeah, we know. You’ve heard that before. Usually it surfaces in the paragraph before an RPG uses 17 pages to explain how to roll for agility. That’s not Dark War REBOOTED. There are only seven character Abilities in our game; Shooting, Melee, Dodge, Speed, Intelligence, Charisma, and Will. Early iterations of the game used agility and strength, but didn’t include shooting and melee. This caused problems with folks new to RPGs. “Now what dice do I roll when I shoot?” or, “What do I roll to dodge that bullet?” It just made sense to us to make the use of abilities as obvious as possible. What do you roll to shoot? Well, your Shooting dice, of course. Your Dodge dice are used when dodging, and Melee dice when you want to bash someone on the head.
That’s great, and a system that we are proud of. But golly, there’s no perception ability, no stealth, and horror upon horror, no driving skill. As a designer you have two choices. You can either list dozens of abilities, which necessitate gamers spending hours rolling up/designing characters, or just cut to the chase, decide what’s important, and get to the good stuff, i.e. playing the game. We choose to play the game. That decision does, however, necessitate that the GM use a bit of common sense. There is no perception ability, per se (it is a kicker). Nor is there a listening ability. So, as the GM, what do you do when Fred states, “I put my ear to the door and listen for anything weird.”? I’d recommend you ask them to roll their Intelligence dice. Or how about a character that attempts to leap from one rooftop to another? Isn’t that agility? Sure it is, but it’s also Speed and Intelligence. Hence, the GM can have said character roll a permutation of those dice.
And strength? Well in most cases, i.e. smashing through a door, strength will be a combination of your Will and Melee dice. If it’s brute strength that needs to be used, the GM should just make a call based on your character’s background. If you are a “fireplug of a man,” maybe you’ll roll 2D8 to lift the rear end of that small Fiat. If you are a small waif who specializes in magic, you might have a harder time. Then again, maybe you could blow it out of the way with a fireball or use Dark Control to tell the musclebound dude standing next to the car to push it.
“But what about driving those cars?” If you’re an adult, you know how to drive a car. And—we hate to break this to you—but unless your name is Kimi Räikkönen (look it up), you can’t drive any better than the person sitting next to you. So, if you want to drive the car, drive the car. If you want to run someone over in your car, the GM can have you roll Will (do you have the stomach for it?) or Intelligence (can you judge the angle you need to impact the hapless pedestrian?) dice. Or if someone is shooting at you in the car, the GM could subtract a die from their Shooting dice. After all, you’re in cover, right?
In short, Dark War REBOOTED includes the tools to handle any situation that we come up with in one heck of a lot of hours testing/playing the game. You just need a GM with imagination (not a difficult thing to find) and gamers with a little creativity, the more the better.
Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver. He is the creator of the Dark War universe, which includes two novels, Revelation and Retribution, several short stories, and the Dark War Rebooted Role-Playing and Skirmish game. He is the owner of Flying Pig Games as well as Tiny Battle Publishing the designer of the aliens-invade-Earth game Night of Man, the Communists invade South Vietnam game, '65, Lock 'n Load, World at War and several other games, as well as the publisher of Old School Tactical, and Armageddon War. Give them a try. I mean, what the hell?
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