CARPG – my LOL/Supers RPG – Explaining the rules

So the rules for CARPG are here.

They are very Vague. Having written them 2 years ago its hard to remember what they are doing! So they need some explanation but also an insight into where the rules come from. I’ve covered attempts at LOL RPGs before here and here and here and finally here!

When I last planned on a LOL game I decided to make my own. My initial requirements were as follows:

Has	Maybe	Not Have
Player do all rolls (cypher/pbta) D8 dice pool (Anny) Powers + Power resources (Lumen) Way to improve roll – re-rolls/boost (fate) Aspects/Distinctions (Fate/Cortex) Things to do with good rolls (AGE/2d20)	Merits (ST)	Roles as statDifferent dice

As you can see I was picking from a lot of different games.

• Players do all the rolls was from needing to play in a car and it being easier If anny did the rolls, while Mika drove and I GMed
• D8s were chosen by Anny, but also work ok in a car and look like diamonds
• The ideas of Powers just auto-hitting was from Lumen. The idea is they are resources based so already have a cost
• Having something like Traits/aspects/distinctions is a rules light way of having narrative strands to characters affect the game
• And playing 2d20 means I like degrees of success to matter

Characters

The original characters were Stat+skill.

This was then changed to have a set of abilities that basically copy AGE. Have a set of abilities that clearly work as skills and stats and have focuses inside them. This would make rolling much quicker. I then used a scale which matched to FASERIP as i had FASERIP versions of the NPCs and it made conversion easier.

Merits were then lifted from world of Darkness.

So Characters are made up of Attributes, Focuses, Traits (simple descriptors), Merits and then Powers and attacks.

I created Attacks and Powers as needed based on the characters I already have for 2-3 other attempts in other systems AND from the lore.

The Core Mechanic

All rolls are player facing.

So normal skills rolls have a difficulty based on the difficulty of the task.

Attack rolls are rolled against the target for the Defender

Defense rolls are rolled against the target for the Attacker.

All rolls are d8 dice pools. 5,6,7 are one success, 8s are two. If dice fail they can be re-rolled baced on traits and Focuses.

Combat

There was an idea for initiative based on weapon speed and action. I’m not sure how much I stuck to that.

And I went with a simple 2 action economy.

Although I has an attack type table I’m pretty sure we didn’t use it. But I like the idea to change the odds against various enemies.

I then had a combat spends table from extra successes which we did use.

NPCs

NPCs were built differently from players as I didn’t need abilities. Just Health, a score for opposed roles, scores for attack and defense, armor, damage and then powers. For this I had a level to make this easier.

Next up I will look at the characters and how this worked in play

Tags: CARPG, games, gaming, League of Legends, LOL, moba