By Eric McColm
A number of interesting rules and ideas appeared in home-grown game systems I've seen over the years. While many of these ideas later appeared in published games, some did not. A few deserve special attention.
Dragonfodder was a home-grown game system with too much mechanics to be really playable. But the depth of invention in the magic system was interesting, even as it was cumbersome.
Dragonfodder included a spellpoint system using material components, among other accessories. The base spellpoint cost of the spell was 2 * (spell level)2 Use of words, gestures, materials, accessories, sacrifices, etc, would lower the spellpoint cost. The diminuation rule was by adding to a divisor, similar to limitations in Champions. Using the formulas and charts, magicians who used two or three of these inconveniences were rewarded by being able to cast more spells without tiring. Magicians who tried to use five or six spent most of their time preparing to do something.
Casting spells in Dragonfodder might use an activity appropriate to the spell. For example, enchanting a sword required a sword, so this material component was required. Other spells had only optional spell casting activities.
Later uses of Champions required the use of Magician Package Deals, where the package required all spells include a common style of magic. The style of magic was expressed as limitations in common between all spells in the style. The minimum limitations-in-common total was +2, or about the same as Gestures, Incantations, and a Wand. Magicians learning more than one style of magic were required to buy more than one package, but were not allowed to use any one KS or PS skill for more than one package. In addition, each spell was required to have the limitations-in-common of one of the styles of magic.
Permanent enchantments were a problem, because most games were designed to prevent player characters from making their own items. The rule used was a combination of Champions and Swordbearer, in which natural objects could be used as point reservoirs for enchantment, but only if the objects became part of the enchantment. While not perfect, the rule had its uses.
Unlike the spell lists used in Dungeons & Dragons, spell lists in various games varied with the magic style or magician subclass. Also, most spells were available to most styles, although the spells may be more accessible (or of lower level or cost) in one subclass than in another.
The most extreme example of this separation was a game refereed by SusanJane, featuring five main temples, only one of which had any healing magic at all, and no healing for magicians. The shortage of even modest healing was a serious caution to warriors, and a boon to the popularity of characters with first-aid skills.
Weapon damage was separated into three classes:
Instead of rolling dice for damage, I wrote tables of base + increment values for each weapon. Hit an opponent, and do the base damage. For each point in excess over the "success" number, add the increment. Most good Impale weapons were [.5, .5], and half rounded up.
My favorite trait of this rule is that a good roll is a good hit; there is no second roll for damage. Also, dodging helps, because it decreases the damage to the target.
I still use a variant of this rule in Champions, in which each +3 adds a damage class, up to equal to the weapon damage class. (Strength bonus may add to this, once more up to equal to the weapon damage class.) This very simple rule is virtually identical to Hit Locations combined with Critical Hits, and is both faster and simpler. However, it has resulted in a 2-handed axe delivering 5D6 Killing Damage, or about as much as an anti-tank projectile. While the comparison sounds silly, it is comparing a 2-handed axe in a dragon's eye to the anti-tank shell just anywhere.
Villains who get away have learned something. Next time you see them, they'll have gained a level. This reasonable-sounding rule has been used to frighten many characters, and do in quite a few.
Steve runs dark campaigns. When a villain escapes, the villain gains some experience for escaping a party of monsters. That's us. Then the villain runs off and does the Rocky II thing. We learned to avoid the villain for a while.
Dragonfodder added a table to award experience based on time and profession, heavily biased to idle nobility and people with childhood traumas. Meaning Bruce Wayne. Elves didn't take over the world because their therapists were too good, and they were too interested in Elvish hobbies.
Players were unnerved as their characters grew in power, because their increased fame and standing raised their living expenses. One player lamented he couldn't afford to live in the city that thought so well of him. But they never had too much money.
We've all see the I roll, you roll systems. Dougs Thugs Champions house rules took that away by person 1 rolling to determine what to subtract from person 2's roll, on a logarithmic scale. This works much better, because the best disguise can still be seen through in a heroic setting.
Runequest house rules added to this by making the skill improvement roll depend on the actual roll, not the character skill. While this improved the game, it also made for more paperwork.
Mental abilities rarely work out in games, partly because referees rarely know what effect they want mental abilities to have on society. Dragonfodder forbade mental powers except as a school of magic. Earlier attempts at commonplace mental combat produced invisible fistfights, or a new way for the powerful to prey on the weak.
One campaign added mental combat as a dominance practice between members of the same species, but only while completely immobile and making mutual eye contact. Mental combat was invisible, but not quick. The effect of losing was nausea and weakness, and the certainty of losing to the same person again, but much faster. The only way to get a rematch was to gain a lot of experience. This was not so much a mental combat system, as an excuse by the referee for replacing the violence in medieval society with something less bloody. It wouldn't hold off the Vikings, but it was something.
The half-elf never tried it, so the players still don't really know what "same species" meant.
Dragonfodder was a game expansion, not strictly a whole game system. The expansion used spell lists from several games and reference books, weapon descriptions from all over the world, skills loosely based on Runequest, and a battle system that was original. But much of the novelty of the expansion was its concentration on out-of-combat events. Money, polite society, public standing, faith, and book-learning were more important than in most games. It was still changing when I abandoned it for Fantasy Hero, and rewrote many of its rules for that system.
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