Faolyn
(she/her)
I had a weird dream this morning, about searching for the rules to specific very old RPG that I don't think actually existed.
The game was super rules-light, unusual for the time (the 80s, in the dream). You wrote up a sentence or two for your character, including both good and bad elements. "Bob is a woodsman and a hunter, excelling at bringing down game. Despite spending most of his time in the woods, Bob is a shrewd haggler when it comes to selling his hides. However, despite his excellence with a bow, he's a coward at heart and has no skill with a sword."
You would then roll a die--my dream-self couldn't figure out what type, but I assumed d6s--for each bolded phrase that was applicable, and if you rolled above a certain number (I think a 4) on any of the dice, you succeeded. Otherwise, you failed; the game predated partial successes. If a negative trait was bolded, you removed a die. At this point, a friend of mine popped into the dream and said that he had read that at the end of each adventure, you were supposed to add another sentence or two to your description, based on the events of that adventure, and therefore gain more possible phrases to use to roll. He had also read a supplement (yes, this game had a supplement) where the more difficult the task, the more target numbers needed to be rolled.
Thus began the dream-quest for this game. I knew I had seen it in old magazines, possibly advertised next to TWERPS. I was sure it had been reprinted in the back of some an issue of Pyramid magazine, where it was treated as a normal fantasy game; or had been reproduced in the forward of an old edition of Call of Cthulhu, where it was suggested for use in horror games. In this dream, I had to search in the cheap bins at comic stores, because the game had also been mentioned in a comic; wander through a mall, looking for the book store that contained the original book; and infiltrate a secret nazi breeding ground so I could gain access to their databases. I could tell these were nazis from the 30s and 40s both because of their clothing and because their computers used Windows 3.1 and had CRT monitors. It was on those old computers I discovered old websites that in turn referenced older USENET posts that discussed the still-unnamed game.
Then my alarm went off, the true origins of this game yet to be discovered.
So... did this game, or something like it, ever actually exist?
Was I just subconsciously inspired by Morrus's thread about dice pools?
Does it have any potential?
Why do so many of my dreams wind up in malls?
Why nazis?
What even is my brain?
The game was super rules-light, unusual for the time (the 80s, in the dream). You wrote up a sentence or two for your character, including both good and bad elements. "Bob is a woodsman and a hunter, excelling at bringing down game. Despite spending most of his time in the woods, Bob is a shrewd haggler when it comes to selling his hides. However, despite his excellence with a bow, he's a coward at heart and has no skill with a sword."
You would then roll a die--my dream-self couldn't figure out what type, but I assumed d6s--for each bolded phrase that was applicable, and if you rolled above a certain number (I think a 4) on any of the dice, you succeeded. Otherwise, you failed; the game predated partial successes. If a negative trait was bolded, you removed a die. At this point, a friend of mine popped into the dream and said that he had read that at the end of each adventure, you were supposed to add another sentence or two to your description, based on the events of that adventure, and therefore gain more possible phrases to use to roll. He had also read a supplement (yes, this game had a supplement) where the more difficult the task, the more target numbers needed to be rolled.
Thus began the dream-quest for this game. I knew I had seen it in old magazines, possibly advertised next to TWERPS. I was sure it had been reprinted in the back of some an issue of Pyramid magazine, where it was treated as a normal fantasy game; or had been reproduced in the forward of an old edition of Call of Cthulhu, where it was suggested for use in horror games. In this dream, I had to search in the cheap bins at comic stores, because the game had also been mentioned in a comic; wander through a mall, looking for the book store that contained the original book; and infiltrate a secret nazi breeding ground so I could gain access to their databases. I could tell these were nazis from the 30s and 40s both because of their clothing and because their computers used Windows 3.1 and had CRT monitors. It was on those old computers I discovered old websites that in turn referenced older USENET posts that discussed the still-unnamed game.
Then my alarm went off, the true origins of this game yet to be discovered.
So... did this game, or something like it, ever actually exist?
Was I just subconsciously inspired by Morrus's thread about dice pools?
Does it have any potential?
Why do so many of my dreams wind up in malls?
Why nazis?
What even is my brain?
