Act 1, Scene 2: Alarums and Diversions

They stared at each other. Which system should they use? Should they attempt to create their own from scratch, or should they avoid reinventing the wheel when so many others before them had tried and, quite frequently, failed?

He had always been a huge fan of the d6 system (West End Games). She usually gave up reading games when it got to the rules (numbers were a necessary evil, as far as she was concerned). What about an adaptation of the new Dr Who system (characteristic + skill + dice roll to beat a difficulty)? She quite fancied pulling little cards out of a bag (she was keeping the idea of sparkly, collectible beads for a sparkly vampire series that will remain nameless game) - nice and unambiguous and great fun when used within the Company and League. Only slight problem there: would people honestly be bothered to cut out all of the little cards? It would be even better if you could use the cake system from Company, except that would involve people baking tiny fairy cakes prior to every game. Highly inkeeping with the spirit of the piece, but something of a faff if you intended to play on a regular basis. Wouldn't do your figure much good, either...


He pointed out, quite succinctly, that gamers love dice. Glancing at her gigantic dice collection, she found it hard to disagree. So dice it would be. But how many and what shape?


(Section deleted as the author's eyes glazed over during the explanation of what the statistics were doing in terms of probabilities and the like. This, she thought, is exactly why she keeps her husband, so she doesn't have to worry about such matters).


In the end, they decided to go for three skills and a single six-sided dice, largely inspired by 3:16 (Gregor Hutton), Over the Edge and Gumshoe (Robin D. Laws). And a difficulty table, but a nice easy one with small numbers.

(And it means she gets to use her lovely steampunk dice that she bought at Dragonmeet)