A complete OSR ruleset: Empress 4e

[Edgewise]

Please excuse the pretentious title; it's not like anyone but me is familiar with editions 1-3. It's more for me to keep track of.

Anyway, I mentioned I was working on this a couple days (day?) ago, and @Butcher suggested I post my game to a thread. Since I've completed my first pass through the text, I decided to go ahead and do just that.

Here it is!
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There are some significant chunks missing; mainly a lot of incomplete tables. I think the rules covered all the situations I wanted to cover, although playtesting will be required to iron things out. With that in mind, feel free to peruse and comment.

...but why would you want to do that? What sets Empress apart from the billion or so other OSR stars in the sky? Well, nothing you can't live without. What I was trying to achieve with this was a game where class has significant meaning, but you can easily customize without a lot of fiddly decisions (like allocating skill points). I also wanted magic to be something that anyone can learn, but only magicians can do more than dabble haphazardly.

To this end, the two biggest ideas here are something I call specializations, and the magic system. Specializations are like very broad skills that you can use as "plug-in subclasses" for PCs. They each cover a broad domain of activity and you only buy each one once; they don't "level up" with more points over time.

The magic system is a bit more complicated to explain. Fortunately, it's pretty simple to use.

Here's a detailed summary of differences:

• Only four basic abilities: Strength, Agility, Mind and Spirit
  • Strength includes general toughness
  • Dexterity now includes stamina...it's more like a general athleticism
  • Mind is important for magic and perception
  • Spirit is for willpower and charisma combined
• Ability-based combat modifiers are a little different
  • AC is now enhanced by Strength instead of Dexterity; represents an improved passive ability to handle damage
  • HP are modified by Agility, since stamina and speed are important to active defense
• There's a Luck Die
  • You roll it to get bonuses to other rolls then drop it down the chain
  • Can also be rolled to see if you're lucky or unlucky; 1-2 is unlucky but 6+ is lucky
• There are three classes and no multiclassing: Warrior, Wizard and Specialist
  • All get better at Initiative
  • Warrior is the only one who gets better at hitting things
  • Wizard is the only one who gets more powerful at casting spells
  • Specialists are...special (see below)
• Instead of skills there are specializations
  • Scope is between a skill and a class
  • For instance, there is a Bushcraft skill that covers tracking, survival, wilderness crafting, etc.
  • They don't "level up"; a character takes a specialization once and gets a significant bonus on all such activities
  • Wizards and Warriors only get a few specializations throughout their career (3 or 4 in 10 levels)
    
  • They are essentially plug-in subclasses
  • e.g. Warrior + Bushcraft = Ranger
• Specialists get a lot of specializations (7 in ten levels, I think)
  • They choose one specialization that they do get better at over time
• Cool specializations:
  • Ambush: Backstabbing, sucker punching, stalking, shadowing
  • Animal Handling: For calming, training, riding and even healing animals
  • Chemistry: Choose three chemical compounds your PC can make; I list 18 examples
  • Contacts: Used to find goods and services (and rumors)
  • Deception: Disguise, forgery, acting, etc.
• Cantrips are handled very differently
  • Treated as a specialization
  • Allows a character to use its Luck die on others
  • Or it can be buffered for a later incident (i.e. bless or curse)
  • Can even use to make permanent bonuses on items at the cost of permanent Luck loss
  • Used by priests, hedge witches, superstitious adventurers, etc.
• Magic is very different!
  • There are three types of spells:
    • Sorcery: Takes a long time to cast but limited spells can be stored in a wand for latest activation
    • Mysticism: Casting is instant but requires stamina, and the character must take a debilitating Mark for every spell learned
    • Alchemy: Takes a long time and expensive materials, but spells create devices and compounds that can be used later by anyone
  • Spell type dictates how it is cast; a given spell effect can be of any type
  • The harder the spell, the bigger its cost
  • Anyone can learn a spell given downtime
  • The costs are significantly greater if one lacks proficiency, however
  • Magicians are automatically proficient in spells of level half their own (only five spell levels)
  • A specialization can be taken to become proficient in five total levels worth of spells
  • Sorcery and Alchemy can be cast "out of the book" even by those who never learned them
  • Only a certain number of sorcery and alchemy spells can be remembered for casting without a book; these can be reallocated during downtime

Anyway, peruse at your leisure. I'll be happy to answer any questions or debate various design decisions (up to a point, of course; it is what it is). If you like it, you're at liberty to steal ideas.

 

[robertsconley]

..but why would you want to do that? What sets Empress apart from the billion or so other OSR stars in the sky? Well, nothing you can't live without. What I was trying to achieve with this was a game where class has significant meaning, but you can easily customize without a lot of fiddly decisions (like allocating skill points).

But what kind of campaign will I be able to run with less work with the above?

I also wanted magic to be something that anyone can learn, but only magicians can do more than dabble haphazardly.

This sounds like you have a vision of a specific setting or a kind of setting which is good. Others who discussed things with me know that I hammer on this point a lot. But I think it is a mistake to define rules first, then everything else. What needs to be defined first is what kind of campaign (or in some cases a specific setting) you are trying to support.

What does a set of rules (based on classic D&D or not) get me where class have significant meaning? What is the ability to customize reflecting here? For example Cublicle 7 in Adventures in Middle Earth by jettisoning spells and traditional magic items and coming with their own alternative made their take on the 5th edition rules reflect the reality of Middle Earth better than if I used just the core 5th edition rules. I could have run a Middle Earth campaign with 5th edition but AiME saves me a lot of work and still leverages my knowledge of 5th edition. The same with White Star, Science Fiction and OD&D.

I think it great you are doing this, but keep in mind the rules are a means not the point of why why we play tabletop roleplaying.

 

[Edgewise]

But what kind of campaign will I be able to run with less work with the above?

That's a good question. I don't have a concise explanation for it, but I do have something in mind. Not a specific setting so much as a type of setting and a style of play. Let me see if I can put some of it into words.

Basically, I'm trying to enable certain types of play. I want magic to be available to all players in a very literary kind of way. Anyone can sit down and learn any kind of spell. But while I wanted that to be possible, I didn't want it to lead to a high-magic setting where everyone's a wizard. So I came up with costs that scale accordingly.

I also wanted magic to be used in colorful literary ways to support different kinds of play styles in a balanced fashion. Sorcery is the closest to D&D's taken on Vance while still maintaining the literary idea of a wizard spending hours to cast elaborate rituals. Alchemy gives a magician another layer of versatility in that he can give "spells" to his allies to cast (i.e. activate). And mysticism can be used to capture everything else. I wanted there to be spells that were more like powers, so you have that literary academic magic, but you also have something grittier. That's why each mystic spell you learn comes with a Mark, which can be anything from making animals nervous or a vow of poverty to tentacles growing out of your chest.

Does this answer your question or is this too mechanical? I'm figuring out the explanation as I go. Basically, I wanted a form of magic that was literary and colorful while being reasonably well-balanced and accessible to all PCs. A tall order, I think. And the mechanics for all this were as simple as I could possibly make them after three prior iterations.

The other major change was the addition of specializations. That was a new idea. The purpose of that was because my earlier versions of the game had skills, but they were a little too fiddly. I want players to be able to roll up characters quickly in the OSR tradition. Specializations make character creation a lot faster without losing any of the interesting parts of customization. Prior games had multiclassing, with only specialists able to improve skills. It was an uncomfortable hybrid between class-based and skill-based, so this pushed things back towards a class-base.

So the play style this supports is where characters are a bit more archetypical, and character creation is faster.

I hope this answers your question. It's a good one, so I gave it my best shot.

I think it great you are doing this, but keep in mind the rules are a means not the point of why why we play tabletop roleplaying.

I suppose. I'm not a professional game author/publisher, though, so these are to a certain extent fun exercises. I have no plans to publish this...although I wouldn't rule anything out in the long term.

 

[AsenRG]

First thing I notice, the number makes me think of a D&D 4e retroclone.
Second, with Mind doubling for senses, the wizard is going to be the most naturally perceptive guy in the party, not an absent-minded academic.

Of course, I like your approach to magic better. But then, Vancian magic is roughlu at the bottom of my preferences in magic systems, so it's hardly a surprise!

 

[Edgewise]

Second, with Mind doubling for senses, the wizard is going to be the most naturally perceptive guy in the party, not an absent-minded academic.

Amusingly enough, I went back and forth over this one in my head. In the end, I went this way because the ability list already conflates so much. You can't have a fat sniper with perfect aim and golf swing but no agility, because Dexterity combines hand-eye coordination with reflexes. For what it's worth, the wizard's progression in the perception save is a lot slower than the specialist.

 

[AsenRG]

Amusingly enough, I went back and forth over this one in my head. In the end, I went this way because the ability list already conflates so much. You can't have a fat sniper with perfect aim and golf swing but no agility, because Dexterity combines hand-eye coordination with reflexes. For what it's worth, the wizard's progression in the perception save is a lot slower than the specialist.

Well, you can. It's just going to be an NPC!

 

[Edgewise]

Well, you can. It's just going to be an NPC!

Right, and that's more or less the same here. Although it's worth mentioning that I take a semi-old-school approach to perception; the saving throw is for those few occasions where saying what your PC pays attention to is not enough to adjudicate. If your wizard isn't paying attention, it doesn't matter how high his perception save is.

 

[Edgewise]

A couple tweaks I forgot to mention; they're minor but some might find them interesting:

• HP gain per level is fixed at X + Dexterity modifier instead of 1dX + Constitution modifier
• Weapon damage is by size class
• Different weapon types (ax, spear, sword) get +1 to hit against certain parts of the AC range
  • Sword gets +1 against AC +0 to +2
  • Spear gets +1 against AC +2 to +4
  • Axe gets +1 against AC +4 to +6
  • Powerful weapons like firearms halve or negate armor AC contribution
• When a character with a higher initiative total attacks one with a lower total, the attack is +1 to hit

That last one was initially going to be bigger, but a little bit of playtesting showed me how destabilizing that would be. The thing to remember is that not only are you getting +1 to hit an opponent, but depriving a foe of +1 to hit you. Combine that with the fact that winning initiative means that you're going first, and it makes initiative important enough.

 

[Consonant Dude]

Funny. The last week or so I have started a spring cleaning of music and RPG files on my computer and today, I stumbled on this game while taking care of the letter E and had no recollection of where I got it. Thanks to google, I traced it back to here and reactivated my account

I see that the file on my computer is identical to the one here. It had no date and no credits inside, so I've modified my Word copy crediting it to Edgewise and put 2018 as the date.

Seems like a promising game based on the rough draft! Was this ever tested further? Reworked? Turned into something else?

 

[Silverlion]

You know I look at your stats and assigned classes to them: Strength/Warrior Dexterity/Rogue (specialist) Mind/Wizard Spirit/Priest

Now extrapolating from that point you could get 'sub classes' by mixing the stats you choose (however derived) So High Dex/High Strength could be an Assassin or a Ranger with the right profession. Druid would probably be a Priest/Specialist or if we go to original meaning of a wise-man/keeper of lore than it be Priest/Wizard. A Paladin would be Warrior/Priest ('stats')
It actually would allow people to mix and max abilities to make their own archetypes pretty easily...