I'm looking at the Index Card rpg. It looks intriguing. I'm especially drawn to the fact that there are no levels.
I have a few of questions: how well does it work as a solo system? And can you build a truly badass character right away?
Also, is it easy to convert other Ogl material to this system?
Thank you Omari Brooks and Thredith Undomiel. I think I'm sold on the system.
ReplyDeleteThough I'm a bit confused about how effort works. I didn't get much out of the quickstart when I read it.
Benjamin Nehring Effort represents the amount of work you need to do to accomplish a specific task (I.e. kill a monster, open a locked door, craft a sword, catch a salmon with your bare hands) after successfully attempting to do it.
ReplyDeleteLet’s say you want to catch a salmon with nothing else but your hands. You’re next to a river, and everything is calm. The GM says that scenario, due its peaceful nature, offers a challenge of 10 for everything you attempt to do. You roll 1d20 to check if your attempt to catch the salmon is successful or not. You get a 13, which indicates you’ve succeeded. However, catching a salmon with your bare hands is not an automatic feat. It is something that may take your character a while to accomplish, so you roll for effort. Because you’re using your hands, and not a spear (weapon) or magic to do it, you roll 1d4 of basic effort. Catching a salmon is a 1 heart task (I.e. 10 points of effort), and let’s say you got a 3 on your effort roll. That means you’ll have to make 2 successful extra attempts or more to complete the amount of effort needed to catch a salmon with your bare hands (which right now would be a task with 7 more effort points to go)! In other words, you must roll for 2 or more extra attempts to accumulate 10 effort points total (I.e. 1 heart) to catch the salmon. Once you accumulate 10 effort or more, 1d4 at a time, (unless your attempt grants you a critical 20 in which case you’d be allowed to try for ultimate effort (1d12) instead of basic effort) the salmon is yours!
This same mechanic applies to fighting monsters (if one dared to attack you right now, as you fish in the calm river, it’d require an attempt of 10 or more as well, although it could need double the effort than the salmon to claim success), or even jumping in the water while trying to backflip epically if you so desired.
Thredith Undomiel Thank you for explaining how effort works. I bought the game and got a chance to read the rules. I understand the base difficulty is twelve give or take modifiers.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I found the rules didn't explain very well about effort was: do you have to roll for the difficulty each time? Or do you just roll once and then roll for effort each time? Or do you just play it by ear?