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First up is Caltrop Core. It doesn't get much more basic than this. I don't remember exactly when I first encountered this system, but it's probably been a year or two. For those that can't be bothered to click and see for yourself, this system uses d4's to resolve questions that come up in a game. I have developed a marked dislike for the venerable d20 over the years, so giving some love to the oft-forgotten d4, even if it was just out of spite, appealed to me. You read each die as follows:
| 1 | Absolute Failure. You don't get what you want and things get a lot worse. |
| 2 | Partial Failure. You don't get what you want. |
| 3 | Partial Success. You get what you want, but things get complicated. |
| 4 | Absolute Success. You get what you want - and more. |
As presented, you can either make your Caltrop Core game stat-based or token-based, but either way, as a player, you want to be able to roll as many dice as possible and then use the best result. I liked this idea, but ultimately, the probability spread didn't work for me. I built a different matrix using d6's that looked like this:
| 1 | Critical Failure, and each 1 beyond the first amplifies the severity. |
| 2-4 | Failure. |
| 5 | Success, but there may be a complication. |
| 6 | Complete Success, and each 6 beyond the first amplifies the benefits. |
I wound up writing out a dozen pages of rules to support this idea, and I think what I have constitutes a fully formed system, but the way I determined how many dice to roll for each test was a little complicated in non-typical but still common enough circumstances. About the time I finished it, I found FU by Nathan Russell, which does very much the same thing in a way that is probably better. *sad trumpet sound*
But then I got distracted...
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I have to say, the NSR kit-bash scene is pretty insane. Reading through the myriad rulesets is like staring down at a hopelessly cross-contaminated petri dish where multiple, variably virulent cultures are spreading, subsuming, and interbreeding in a slimy, fuzzy kaleidoscope of TTRPG goodness. Sadly, my gaming life is still struggling to recover from COVID, so I spend my free time reading and writing and experimenting with rules and setting ideas in the hope that someday, maybe I will have an opportunity to try them out.
So, I have this website (this one, where you are reading this post) that I started as an excuse to build a big pile of unpolished ideas that may eventually accrete and fossilize into something useful. Much like all of my other projects, however, it is doomed to sit for long stretches while I obsess over something else. What squirrel?! Where?! Anyway, I realized that I now have a bunch of stuff that I've spread across various computers and internet servers instead of here, in the place that I actually pay for so I can organize and showcase such things.
Not all of them are my ideas, which is why it didn't really occur to me to put them here. But now it has occurred to me, so here's what I'm going to do. The posts that follow, up to and until I get distracted again, will include notes about games I've encountered and a makeshift home-brew game development log so that other people can read my ideas and at the very least feel better about themselves. Sound good? Maybe? No? Well, why are you still here?
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This purse looks like it is made from the dry, somewhat tattered skin of a large toad, complete with head and legs. The toad’s lips have been replaced with a bronze clasp that is bright green with verdigris. The purse radiates moderate transformation and conjuration magic. Looking into it reveals a shiny silver piece of unknown origin and (possibly) an ordinary copper piece. The script and images on the faces of the silver coin are impossible to decipher, even with magic.
As long as that specific silver coin is in the purse, this item will hold an unlimited number of coins and gems, and it will never gain any additional weight or bulk. All money and gems placed in the purse have their value converted to copper pieces, however. As long as it has any money in it at all other than the silver piece, it will look, feel, and sound like it contains a silver and a copper. Only one copper at a time may be taken from the purse, and the holder of the purse must count out loud as each piece is taken out of it. Each 1,000cp (10gp) takes about fifteen minutes to extract. In the event the holder of the purse loses count, then all coins must be returned to the purse before the count can be reset. If for some reason the coins cannot be returned to the purse, the count will reset at the next sunset. Only divination magic can determine how many coins the purse truly holds.
If the silver coin is removed, then any money it holds is inaccessible until the silver piece is returned to the purse. Without the silver piece, the purse functions as a non-magical container, and placing the silver piece in a different container does not give that container any special properties. Obviously, turning the purse upside down or inside out causes the silver coin to fall out.
The purse is considered to be a bag of holding for purposes such as determining the outcome of placing one extra-dimensional item inside another.
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The recent OGL 1.1 flap demonstrates the dangers of putting all of your gaming eggs in one basket. Sure it's nice to know that there is a large pool of potential players and buyers of compatible materials, but it also means there are fewer choices at the table and on retail shelves. Having grown up playing TTRPGs in the 1980's, I sorely miss finding those really weird games with bad art and impractical rules in my local game shop. That stuff sparked my imagination more than any D&D module could. Those games usually had at least one thing that was way outside the box, and because most of it really wasn't commercially viable, it often had a necessarily DIY aesthetic that spoke directly to my punk rock soul. I found the limitations of AD&D stifling. I wanted to do it better. I still do, but I'm not sure that is realistic at this point in my life.
And so The Runcible Speculum is born. It is here that, in my declining years, I will dump all of my half-baked, untested ideas that might have eventually found their way to publication if I had the gumption to create a finished product. With luck, my RPG ambergris will do for you what those fascinating but ill-fated games of the past did for me.
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This is the inaugural post of The Runcible Speculum. No mission statement, big reveal, or indication of what I plan to do here. I'm just popping the first post anxiety bubble. Please move along.