Weasel & Kid Sinister, Homebrew Rules & Online Tools

 I have typed up two sessions of my Weasel & Kid Sinister game, up until this point I have refrained from saying much about the rules I am using or the tools I use to aid solo play.  

Read Session 1 here, Weasel & Kid Sinister Session 1
Read session 2 here, Weasel & Kid Sinister Session 2

Weasel and Kid Sinister came about when I created Shona the Thief for Osric, (the post is here), which basically explains Shona and her reasons for leaving Weasel and Kid Sinister.  I ended up wanting to play a game involving Weasel and Kid but as I thought about it, the names just did not seem to fit a typical fantasy setting, they seemed much more suited to modern or post apocalypse style games.

I went around the houses looking at different TTRPG's, trying to find one that fit the sort of game I had in mind, there are some great ones out there, Other Dust, Anima Prime, Lowlife 2090, maybe even Stars without Number may have worked.  I realised I was spending more time looking for a system to play than actually playing, I made the decision to make up some simple rules which would not slow down play and keep the action going to help avoid my game stalling, something which happens to me a lot.

One final point worth mentioning, I only envisage my Weasel and Kid game to run for 6 or 7 one hour sessions, I have no plans to run it long term, I have my Other Suns and Beyond the Wall solo campaigns which I want to return to and play, so it seemed silly to buy another set of rules that I may only ever play for a few hours, better to quickly write my own set supported by an Oracle and other useful solo gaming tools.

My Homebrew Rules.

I want to say straight away that these rules are unlikely to be unique nor are they radical, just very basic rules for putting a character together and getting my game going.  I post them here so that you can see how the game works, feel free to use them if you think they may be of use to you.

Character Creation

Pick 3 Skills for each character.

Each character has 3 Wound Slots, (Once a character takes 3 wounds they are out of the game).

Write a brief description and background for each character

Doing Anything.

Characters can attempt to do anything. 

Roll 1d6, 1-3 means they failed, 4-6 means they succeed.

+1 to die roll if they have a relevant skill

+1 if the task seems very easy

-1 if the task seems very hard

-1 to die roll for each wound slot taken up with a wound

In combat, characters always go first, use the above Doing Anything chart to see if a wound is inflicted on an opponent, all weapons inflict 1 wound on a success roll, this applies to both characters and enemies.

NPC's and Creatures have between 1-4 wound slots depending on their size.
roll 1d6 to hit (or for them to attempt anything else), 1-3 fail, 4-6 success
A creature or NPC with 4 wound slots gets +1 bonus
A creature or NPC with 2 wound slots gets -1 penalty
A creature or NPC with only 1 wound slot gets a -2 penalty 

As with characters, once a creature or NPC has 0 wound slots left, they are out of the game.

Anything not covered above, use the oracle to determine the out come.

And thats all there is to the rules.

Online Tools

For this game I have used the online game aid SoloistRPG, (link here), as well as the pdf that goes with it.  I find soloistRPG a very useful tool with its built in oracle, dice rolling and player roster.

If I get stuck and need a prompt to keep the game going I go to https://game-icons.net and get a random icon.  If the icon makes no sense for the current situation I get one or two more random icons.  If by the third icon I still cannot fit it in to the current situation, I get two random verbs from https://www.randomlists.com/random-verbs , that usually turns something useful up, if not I just move on with the game, I don't allow it to stall by overthinking things.

Randomlists.com has loads of other useful random lists, I think its well worth checking out.

And thats it, thats the rules and tools for this game, time now to 

Adventure On!