Myth & Measure - A Simple TTRPG for Beginners

This game is intended to suit brand new players and can work for fantasy or sci-fi.

How to Play

The medium of the game is conversation. Follow this pattern:

• First, the Game Master (GM) describes a scene or situation.
• Second, players describe what their characters say or do.
• Third, the GM determines and describes what happens.
• Repeat until the scene or situation is resolved. Then, establish a new one.

Grounded Fiction

Fiction doesn't mean anything goes! Try anything if it makes sense in a believable make-believe world. Use the stock of your crossbow for an improvised weapon strike or flip a table and fling its contents at a foe.

Rolling Dice

Roll your dice pool (1 to 3) and compare it to a difficulty (2 to 12). If actions are contested by an opponent, the highest roll wins. Ties go to the defender.

Die size is based on skill:

• d4 = average
• d6 = trained
• d8 = skilled
• d10 = expert
• d12 = master

Difficulty

2 to 12, and it should feel intuitive. No roll if something can reasonably succeed. 1 is bad - the GM can ascribe a narratively appropriate consequence.

• 2 = Trivial
• 4 = Novice
• 6 = Intermediate
• 8 = Expert
• 10+ = Master

Push Fate

If the difficulty is out of reach, increase your base die by one step (ex: d4 to d6). Must be emotional, environmental, or resource driven. Maybe a personal goal or loved one is at stake, or features of the environment can give you an edge such as a storm wind that divert arrows.

Dice Pool

Your base roll is one die. Add additional die based on situations (one to three dice). Roll and keep the highest die.

Player Characters (PCs)

Create an ordinary person who becomes an adventure. You start out as a nobody, but you have a chance at greatness.

Attributes

Characters have five attributes. Begin with one d8 and two d6s. The rest are d4s. At character creation, you may upgrade one by one die size.

• Strength measures brute force, lifting, carrying, melee, and brawling
• Agility measures reflexes, throwing, sneaking, tumbling, ranged weapons, hand-eye-coordination
• Knowledge measures lore, knowledge, technology, crafting, tool use
• Vitality measures your resistance to poison, fatigue, disease, enduring harsh weather, going without sleep, to avoid stagger and stun
• Willpower measures magic, resistance to stress and effects against the mind

Player Skill Over Character Skill

Statistics don't describe your character's personality or mind! Players portray their character. Rely on your own charisma, wisdom, intelligence, and luck!

Below is a list of actions or reactions associated with each attribute.

Strength

Melee for attacking and parrying with melee weapons

Brawling for barehanded attacks and grappling, to avoid being shoved

Athletics for climbing and swimming

Agility

Projectile & Throwing Weapons

Tumbling to balance and land after a fall

Defending against attacks

Sneaking to move silently or hide in shadows

Pickpocket to pick pockets, plant items, or cut purses without notice

Knowledge

Tools is your ability to use tools such as lockpicks or to use mechanical devices

Crafting is your knowledge of creating quality goods such as alchemy

Lore is your knowledge of history, nature, religion, society, and obscure things

Medicine to diagnose and treat people or animals

Tracking for finding and following tracks

Games for card games, board games

Vitality

Resisting fatigue, disease, poison, etc.

Willpower

Sense to detect magic or divine the unseen

Channeling to commune with entities and command them or their powers

Weaving to manifest effects, conjure, mend, ruin

Talents

Choose one talent. Your talent lets your roll a bonus die when you make specific actions, or gives you special abilities. 

Attractive: Add a bonus +2 to reaction rolls

Bushcraft: Add a bonus die to tracking rolls and wilderness survival

Elemental Affinity: Once per day, ignore harm from one elemental (choose)

Gambler: Add a bonus die to a game of skill or chance

Healing Hands: Restore 1 health with a touch per character per day

Magic Bloodline: Roll a bonus die to resist magic that causes sleep or charm

Thievery: Add a bonus die to picking locks or pockets

Weapon Specialist: Chose one weapon. Roll a bonus die to attack.

Resources

Divide 5 points among three resources. Recover completely each day. GMs should feel free to make recovery rate slower or faster, or require specific rest or treatment.

Health: Subtract 1 if hit. KO'ed at 0.

Stamina: Spend 1 to exert yourself and add a die to your pool or push fate. Subtract 1 if you fail a roll to resist fatigue.

Magic: Subtract 1 to cast a spell.

Gear

Adventurers and explorers need gear. Gear is managed with "slots" as shown below. Slots describe your carrying capacity. There is no catalog of gear. If you want something at character creation, write it down.

Character Slots

Weapon

Armor

Shield

Ring

Ring

Pocket or Pouch

Pocket or Pouch

Backpack Slots

Rations

Water Canteen

Torches

Rope

Ammunition Container

Currency

Tools

Personal Item (a memento or trinket)

Other

Magic and Extraordinary Powers

Character creation is when you choose if your character can use magic or other extraordinary powers. Refer to the Magic Section.

Character Improvement

Milestone based. Complete an adventure or train under an NPC instructor. Improve one attribute by 1 die size, increase a resource by 1 (cap 5), add a new talent, or add another gear slot. To earn a d12 attribute, complete an extraordinary milestone. Characters should not fulfill multiple milestones per adventure.

Combat Section

Combat should feel intuitive, fast and fluid. Transition in and out of combat seamlessly. Measure space with your pencil or hand rather than count spaces.

Time

One combat round represents a few seconds. 

Turn Structure

Whoever acts first in the scene goes first. Then, turns go clockwise around the table.

Turns

Move without acting, act without moving, or move as part of your action, but acting ends your turn. No double moves or double actions.

Movement and Range

Precision and tracking literal space is not the intended way to play. Use abstract space. A pen, pencil, or your thumb and first finger is about 6".

• 1" or less is melee range (eyeball it)
• 6" or less is short or throwing range, and is also normal movement
• 12" or less is medium range (no penalty for ranged weapons, -1 die for throwing)
• 18" or less is long range (-1 die)
• Cannot attack beyond 18"

Opposed Rolls

Any time your action is opposed by another character. Example: Attacking an opponent. Each character rolls the applicable attribute. Ties result with nothing substantial.

Character Death

No complex countdown. At 0 hp, you're KO'ed for the length of a scene or encounter. Subsequent hits are automatic deathblows. No resurrection.

Attacking

Choose an opponent within range. Attacker and opponent roll their appropriate die pool. Highest roll wins. Ties mean nothing happens. On a hit, opponent subtracts 1 health.

Defending

Spend your action to Defend, add a die to your pool.

Brawling and Grappling

Unarmed strikes don't subtract health unless the opponent rolls a 1 or is unable to roll. While grappling, unable to move or act based on the logic of the pin, hold, shove, etc. To escape a grapple, use an action and make a successful roll. If you're on your feet, you can move on the same turn you escape. Attacking barehanded or with small weapons like daggers is effective in a grapple if arms are reasonably unrestrained.

Hit Locations / Disarming / Other Maneuvers 

The attacker subtracts one die from their pool (minimum pool 1). If already at minimum pool, opponent gets a bonus die to oppose.

Magic Section

The availability of magic depends on the genre and setting of the game. In a sci-fi game, it may be PK or ESP instead.

Theme

Choose a theme for your character's magic that suits the setting and tone of the game, and discuss its limitations with the GM.

Casting

No catalog of spells! Magic is freeform. Describe the effects of the spell you want to cast that suits your theme. Then roll against either a difficulty or an opposed roll. All spells cost 1 magic to cast regardless of success.

Difficulty

Magic should be mystical but not super heroic of physics breaking. A difficulty scale is below.

• 1 Something unintended happens! This is up to the GM.
• 2-3 spells that effect one character or object, have one trivial effect, a short range, short duration. Manipulate an object remotely, conjure a small illusion, or detect if an object has magic.
• 4-5 spells that effect one character or object, have one minor effect including damage or a condition, a medium range, short duration
• 6-7 effect one character or object and up to three adjacent or nearby characters or objects, one minor effect, a medium range, short duration
• 8-9 effects an area, one major effect or multiple minor effects, a medium range, a short or medium duration
• 10+ multiple or powerful effects, multiple characters, a long duration, great range

Game Master (GM) Section

Rules are not intended cover everything, that's why there's a GM!

Rulings

The GM determines the outcomes of actions. Base your rulings on the established logic of the setting and the fiction. Rulings should make sense for a believable make-believe world.

Preparing and Running Games

Keep it simple. Less is more. Rely on improv.

Design problems, not solutions. Allow the players to find their own solutions.

Prep the setting and the characters who live there, not the story.

Prepare obstacles and opportunities. Let the players find these themselves.

Dice and Rules

Dice and rules are not in charge of the game. Dice are for simulating things we can't do at the table. Rules are for structure.

Reaction Rolls

When the player characters (PCs) meet new non-player characters (NPCs), roll two six-sided dice (2d6) to determine the NPCs starting attitude towards the PCs. High is favorable, low is unfavorable. Middle numbers are neutral.

Morale Checks

Thinking, feeling people and beasts do not want to fight to the death. They act on a sense of self-preservation when reasonable. When in doubt, roll to determine if they continue to fight or if they attempt to parley, surrender, or retreat.

Fate Die

When you want to be surprised by what happens next, roll a d6. Low numbers mean something unfavorable to the players, high numbers mean something favorable happens to the players.

Sample Setting

Adventures take us from a settlement to a dungeon, and across the wilderness in between. Settlements are any town or hub with non-player characters (NPCs) who offer resources and quests. The dungeon is any place where the player characters (PCs) overcome dangerous challenges and obstacles for a reward, even a derelict ship or the ruins of a colonny. Wildernesses are untamed, wild, and un-explored lands, seas, or space routes.

Settlement: Haven

Society: small frontier town with a lot of simple rugged folk

Politics: Good Sheriff Reed enforces the law. Honest Mayor Baker runs the town.

Economy: Haven is self-sufficient with many trades. Includes a Traveler's Lodge, Smithy, Bowman, and general trader.

Religion: Church of Lucius run by Father Maxwell.

Military: sheriff and militia only, no military

Local Experts: Jeff, an old huntsman with failing eyes; Mack, a retired veteran with a bad sword arm; Les, a surgeon with an addiction.

Local Conflicts: infrequent confrontations with raiders. Reward for their leader Red Samuel AKA Samuel the Manslayer.

A Wild Maneater: an injured cougar is forced to hunt men, women, and children for food.

Goblins: people who go to far west off the edges of the map don't always come back. Some people claim to have escaped goblins out there.

Wilderness

Terrain: mix of plains, hills, forrests, occasional rocky outcropping

Climate: Mediterranean. Hot, dry summers but cold wet winters. 

Local Landmarks: 

Nina River. Shallow but wide. Non-navigable

Gregory's Pale. Wide, deep. Occasional floods during the winter.

Pagan Shrine: A stone monument to some nature deity hidden in the woods. Occasionally littered with empty alcohol bottles sold in town.

Animals: Crows, rabbits, elk, occasional bears, cougars, venomous snakes

Plants: Oak Trees, Fruit-bearing trees (apple), Devil's Thorn, Mako Leaf, Vigor Root, Elder Berry

Dungeon: Old Lionheart Fortress

History: This fortress was intended to be the springboard for expansion into the frontier, but the alchemist loosed something he couldn't control and the fortress was abandoned.

Goal: vault filled with gold deep inside

Challenges: traps, monsters

Factions: black tooth goblins lead by Snake Biter; Raiders lead by Red Samuel

Notable Rooms: alchemists' workshop; prison; kitchen; grand banquet hall; art gallery; servants' quarters; lord's quarters; old barracks.

Other Inhabitants: a slime; a half-troll hiding from society; a speechless wooden man animated by a mysterious alchemic source; a mad homunculus with a fatal flaw trapped in a coffin.

Sample Dungeon - Design

I made a (an unfinished) dungeon.

This is by no means a finished product. It is an example. And this is a lesson about what you need, and what you don't!

First, scale. What is the scale? Scale means how big it is. I don't have a grid, and that's fine. In its absences, we can say the smaller rooms are about 30 ft x 20 ft and the bigger rooms are about 60 ft x 40 ft. Don't like those dimensions? Change them. Precision is extraneous. Keep it simple. This is economic prep and GMing.

Second, cardinal directions. I have no compass rose. Which way is north? You're the GM. You pick.

Third, what's the name and story of this dungeon (the context)? Call it a fill in the blank dungeon. It looks like a cave network right. Or maybe it's an old mine. Doesn't need to be special. Write a short list of three to five things about it. Who, what, when, where, why, how. It's your setting - you know best.

Context

Now that the obvious questions about the map are answered, and I assume not everyone is happy, we can talk about why scale, markings, and deep lore aren't important. Ahem. Your players don't care. OK, they might care. Nerds. The context, why they're here and why this place is or was important, is helpful. Let's brainstorm three explanations.

1. This is an old coal mine. Because of the plague, all the minors got sick and many died. While it was vacant and inactive, monsters moved in and now they're interfering with the mine restarting.
2. A small, private silver mine. The deed holder died of old age, and the heirs are fighting over how to split it. One of them wants to hire diggers and continue to operate it, one of them wants to sell it to a noble and earn some favor. A gang of bandits have arrived to sabotage it for one of the parties.
3. This iron mine operated during the war, was stripped of all the iron deposits, and has been boarded up to prevent outlaws and wild animals from moving in. Someone dangerous opened it up and is hiding out.

Nothing special, right. Simple, one to two sentence backgrounds. There's room for you to improv, speculate, extrapolate, and embellish on, but there's not an overwhelming amount of information for you to learn. It's not limiting, restrictive or cumbersome.

Design

This is where I tell you what makes a good dungeon, obviously.

Room key

The rooms are keyed, but keys are always flexible and subject to change. Note how simple they are. It does not need to be paragraphs. Don't have read aloud text. Use bullet points and keep it to a small list of essentials. Monsters and their stats should be one line. Treasure should be one line.

Exploration

Exploration means that there are choices to make and things to discover or miss. The fun of exploration is discovery, so learn from Starfield by Bethesda and put monsters, traps, hazards, and treasure, and notice that there are optional paths! In fact, there is an optional entrance that plops the PCs in room 8a near room 11 where the 5-room dungeon begins.

5-Room Dungeon

Believe it or not, rooms 11 through 15 are a 5-room dungeon. You've heard about these right? Each room resembles a significant beat in three-act story structure. There's an intro, a minor obstacle, a major obstacle, a climax, and a reward. It's not perfect, whatever. The point is that it's in the back of the dungeon. This means you have a structured, linear ending after a dungeon with choices.

Multiple Entrances 

The dungeon has two entrances (room 1 and 8a). The reason being is because this means that the PCs have something to discover, and they have a choice about how to access the dungeon. Room 1 is the main entrance, but room 8a goes up. Maybe it was a natural opening that was used an old emergency exit or, maybe above it they build a separate structure and used it for worker housing or for a depo. There are multiple factions in this dungeon, and each gets their own entrance.

Annotated Maps

The edges of this drawing are filled in and the rooms are small. Were I to use the entire piece of paper, I would put notes and symbols all over the map. Anything to simplify the map and make it more intuitive is helpful.

Loops

I've got loops in my map. Loops make it interesting and each loop can be treated as its own zone.

Volume

15 to 24 rooms sounds like a perfectly good size dungeon to me. I have rooms numbered 1 to 15, plus 8a.

Flow Charts

Maps are overrated. Flow charts are simpler. Use a flow chart like this one instead. It's the same as the map above. The shapes of the rooms are all pretty square, but their shapes here are not intended to be literal. 

Map Key

1. Main Entrance. The entrance to the mind shaft has a sign bearing the name of the mine and the notifies trespassers "private property". Roll a 1d6; There is a 1-2 chance of encountering 1d6 bandits on watch for potential trespassers.

2. Rubble path. Recently collapsed, but narrow paths have been haphazardly cleared by its new temporary occupants.

3. Mine and pit. The outer perimeter ramps down into a pit in the center. This is where most of the mining was done.

4. Tool storage. Only old, worn, damaged tools left.

5. Bandit leader's room. His treasure is hidden here in a locked box. A bound prisoner is kept here.

6. Bandit's common room / barracks. They are occupying the mine. Bedrolls, food and drinks, and some possessions are stored here. They keep one watch dog here to protect against traffic coming from the direction of room 7 and beyond.

7. Empty room. 

8. Trap - The trip wire spans the hall, and goes up to a concealed bottle of alchemist fire and is suspended from the ceiling. If kicked or stepped on, the bottle is yanked and falls to the ground. Poof!

8a. Broken Ladder 15 ft up and out of dungeon through a hole among tall grass! It is prone to break under the weight of a human-sized creature (roll 1-2 on a d6). Two people on the ladder at the same time means the ladder automatically breaks. Anyone who falls, or who has someone fall on them, takes 1d6 damage.

9. Seemingly empty. Stash of silver ore hidden by one of the bandits.

10. Three large watchdogs are placed here by bandits who occupy rooms 5 + 6. They are roped in place to a stake in the ground, but each has 50 ft of slack.

11. Stick topped with severed human head. Goblin foot tracks below. Improv ropes has been made from strips of cloth (old shirts) and suspended from the ceiling like a curtain. Bones have been tied in them. They clatter when you pass through them. This is an alarm.

12. Goblin guard post. 1-3 goblins are on watch at any time.

13. Goblin barracks. 4 to 6 goblins, either resting or rough housing.

14. Goblin common room (12 to 18 goblins resting)

15. Goblin chief's room + his 3 goblin concubines and their treasure hoard - a pile of two-hundred forty (240) impure silver nuggets worth about 24 gp.

Wandering Encounters

Yes, you need these. They make your dungeon feel like a living, believable place, and they encourage PCs to treat the dungeon that way. Each round of exploration or movement, roll a 1d6. On a roll of a 1, roll for an encounter based on the room (see below). If you roll an encounter, place it logically. The NPCs do not simply appear without logic. They are either in the room before the PCs arrived, or they are approaching this room from another room.

The NPCs are aware that they share the dungeon with another faction, but they are relatively familiar with their presence, and they tentatively respect each other's boundaries. They are suspicious and untrusting of the other faction, thought they don't tend to engage in violence or theft. Therefore, both factions are generally cautious when wandering the dungeon. If the PCs have not encountered the NPCs, then the NPCs are cautious but not alert; otherwise, the NPCs are cautious of possible intruders and are actively keeping an eye out for them. 

• Rooms 1-6, and 10, encounter 1d6 wandering bandits. They are either on their way to mine, or they're checking on the dogs, or they're going to relieve guards at room 1, or they're preparing to leave the mine to commit various crimes on the road or in town.
• Rooms 11-15, encounter 1d6 goblins.
• Rooms 7-9, you may encounter either 1d6 bandits (1-3 chance) or 1d6 goblins (4-6 chance). The goblins use room 8a to leave the dungeon to raid farms for livestock, pets, or small children.

Annotated Map (Flow Chart)

You can add more notes, but I got lazy. The contents of the room could be added. This is the apex of the dungeon map. Honestly, I don't know why maps aren't done more like this.

Alignment and Morality in TTRPGs

Moral grayness sucks and it needs to go. This post is about the rejection of moral grayness in fantasy and fiction by instructing you on the meanings of the associated ideas. I'm going to reference Avatar the Last Air Bender (AtLAB) because that's where the idea for this post began, then I retrofitted it to D&D and TTRPGs.

Spirits in AtLAB are humanized characters because they're nuanced and complex, but they do not have a mystery morality or some exotic morality. Somehow, audiences think they have some complex, otherworldly morality. This is a mistake; you simply don't fully understand the individual spirits because their thinking isn't fully explained; They have not been demystified. Similarly, there is no alignment to neutrality or evil as these are nonsensical ideas. TL;DR, you're either moral or you're lacking morality. Let me break it down.

Objective morality describes beliefs and values that are either more beneficial (or helpful) than they are detrimental (or harmful) to us, or more detrimental then beneficial, and we call these morally good (moral) or morally bad (immoral). We call morality righteous and we call immorality evil.

Amorality means without morality or lacking morality. Babies and puppies, and people and creatures who don't understand the difference between right and wrong, are amoral because they are not moral agents. A moral agent is someone who understands the difference between right and wrong and can make choices to act in ways that are right and wrong. Amorality does not necessarily mean, imply or suggest moral relativism or that one is a moral relavitist.

Immorality and amorality are not their own ideas separate and apart from objective morality. What they mean is a lack of morality.

Moral variety describes different moral values held by different people in different times and places that are still either more beneficial than detrimental or vice versa. Perspectives can change and vary, but the morality of actions can still be measured. You can argue moral relavitism, but the problem is anything can be justified if there is no objective right and wrong.

There is no category of morality that is separate from this (i.e. human morality vs spirit morality or some exotic mystery morality). You either recognize actions as being more beneficial than they are detrimental, or you don't.

Just so we're clear, I'm not arguing that one belief is true in real life and the other is false. I'm also not arguing that one belief is superior to live by in real life. I'm arguing that the belief of moral relativism sucks in fiction.

As an intentionally very simple argument, I would argue that unaliving innocent puppies is morally bad (immoral), but saving puppies is morally good (moral). Being indifferent to the unaliving of puppies could be amoral, but it's also lacking morality.

The spirits in AtLAB are depicted as being somewhere on the spectrum of good and bad, moral and immoral. Wan Shi Tong the owl library spirit for instance, demonstrates an indifference to the suffering of mankind due to a lack of interest or understanding in the human world. In our previous puppies example, this makes him lacking morality. It doesn't matter how you explain his reasoning or justify his point of view, he is lacking morality and his choice of actions and inactions would lead to outcomes that are more detrimental than beneficial. Screw Wan Shi Tong. He's a git and a prat. If Wan Shi Tong chose to unalive puppies by buring then in sand and refused to allow you to save them, you should not sit in awe of his exotic otherworldly morality. You should rightly think he's a git and a prat.

Morally gray characters are genrally (but not always) unlikable. Don't sit there and argue that your neutrally aligned D&D character is morally grey or amoral, and that somehow means he's not immoral. The moral complexity of every situation is not like the Trolly Cart Dilemma. Sometimes you're playing a character who is making choices that we would describe as more harmful than helpful (bad choices), and the reasoning for your choice may be sympathetic, but we can still say your character is lacking morality. Another neutral character who is concerned with the balance of good and bad (which is nonsensical but a valid alignment in D&D - bleh) is someone who sometimes helps evil triumph over good, and that means they occasionally make choices that are more detrimental than beneficial. Evil is not a force you're aligned to, that's also nonsensical. Evil people are moral agents who actively make choices that are more harmful than helpful (such as murder) and are significantly lacking morality. People like this should be opposed by anyone, not just those who are moral.

Moral grayness makes for unsatisfying character arcs. How does a morally gray a-hole change and still be morally gray? What do they change into, a slightly more likeable morally gray a-hole? That suggests traits or qualities that are consistent with universally likeable characteristics which would support an argument for moral objectivity. What are they going to defeat, a less likeable morally gray a-hole? You realize that if morality is relative, then its equally valid for the audience to root for the antagonist if the audience agrees with the antagonist more, right? What themes are there for morally gray a-holes? Always be yourself? I guess you could have a morally gray a-hole learn the value of being an A type morally gray a-hole after struggling with pretending to be a B type morally gray a-hole. Do I need to explain why that's linear and not growth, and also not fulfilling to sit through? It could work in a comedy. Even mean old bad old Dr. Greggory House of the series House has a heart of gold and a standard of trying to save lives.

For some supplemental material, please see this amusing 5 minute video "From my point of view the Jedi are Evil! [Legends] [Remastered]" by Seals are Good.