The Grizzly Rant

I have a mage at my table. Her name is Sabina, the Pyromage. She has a spell that can either: Clear a Room of up to three, small (2 Heart) Enemies in one hit, or; One-shot a non-fire-resistant boss monster.  Sabina is awesome. Provided the spell doesn't explode in her face, miss... or accidentally hit her sister. Because there is another adventurer in the party. Her name is Agnes, the Twin Blade. She's pretty cool too, and her regular attack can one-shot 1-2 Heart creatures. Add the Kettish Chains' ability to re-roll on high Attempts and she easily does similar damage at close range. I love both these characters. But sometimes Agnes feels like Sabina takes the spotlight a little too much. That's on me as the GM, because Sabina has almost zero ability in STR or DEX tasks, things Agnes excels in. I need to design more STR and DEX based Effort challenges to give Agnes more screentime. Sabina can lay down some heavy covering fire. On the subject of "...

Hit Points, dying and death in table-top RPGs: it's an odd subject for a variety of reasons. The "Meta" nature of hit-points, or HP, and what it means; The sudden change from a god-like killing machine to a helpless pile of bleeding flesh; The anti-climatic moment of a player character's death; and much more. Honestly, we're not going to get into the whole subject of Death in RPGs here. I am going to talk a bit about how to make the process of a Hero's death, well, heroic, and therefore (hopefully) alleviate most of the issues presented above. Behold: GM Grizzly's Heroic Death!  The Heroic Death The Heroic Death is simple, yet (in this GM's humble opinion) beautiful. It is a House Rule on the ICRPG CORE Death Mechanics from RUNEHAMMER GAMES, LLC. The Rules there are something along the lines of "at zero HP, roll 1D20. On a 20, pop back up at 1 HP! Otherwise, roll 1D6, throwing out a 1. In this many rounds, you are dead! On yo...

The purpose of this post is to make an argument, based on experience, for designing all Rooms (especially first session Rooms) with a Target 10, using the EASY/HARD rule on the fly to adjust difficulty as needed. Note: If you are reading this, I am assuming that you either A) play ICRPG or B) know the concept of a universal target DC for an encounter. Terminology used here will be from Index Card RPG by RUNEHAMMER GAMES, LLC. I have been playing, designing and GM'ing adventures in ICRPG for a little over a year now. During my brief attempt (and subsequent failure) at launching my own business making adventure supplements, I designed and playtested multiple adventures for entry level, 6 point builds to extreme, high-powered late-game characters with 8 point builds, extra milestones and Epic Loot to start. More recently I ran the Doomvault with for my wife and sister-in law. I also played in several different games with the Ultimate Effort group GM'ed by Mike, Matt and A...

There are many things separating ICRPG from other tabletop RPGs.  Right now, I'd like to write briefly about 2 of them: Effort and Loot-based classes.  This is important background information for what I really  want to get off my chest, which is an argument for running a class/race combination a certain way at your table. Effort and Loot: Effort is a system which attributes health and combat-like mechanics to non-combat tasks.  In short, it's a method of time control for the GM to employ at his or her table, effectively forcing tasks to require multiple turns and/or group "effort."   Players have four different dice they may roll to complete Effort, depending on the situation.  For more information, see ICRPG Core 1.3.3, pg 24.  For our purposes, we just need to know about two: Basic Work and Ultimate effort. Basic Effort is rolled on a d4 for any task done with bare hands.  Ultimate Effort is rolled in special occasions on a d12. ...