Tag: grimdark

All links leading out of jimmychattin.com are unaffiliated.

1. The Core Mechanic
2. The Stats
3. The Fun BITS
4. Notable: Supply Lines
5. Notable: Regiment Creation
6. Notable: Vehicles
7. Notable: Force Fields
8. Notable: Augments
9. Notable: Levels of Damage
10. Notable: NPC Comrades
11. Notable: Compatible With Other Games
12. –

Warhammer 40,000 Only War is a grimdark soldiers-at-the-front game that is inundated with minutia that makes the title more a tactical simulation than a game-for-fun as-is.

Big game tomes tracking every little thing makes sense – back in 2012 during the game’s publication, D&D was the primary RPG example in town, Only War itself based off of the piles-o’-dice tabletop wargame WH40K. There is so much here, this blog post will have to be abridged (not a full conversion of the main features to BITS).

The publisher has since come a hugely long way with Age of Sigmar: Soulbound, yet there are still gems here applicable to the BITS system. Skimming over some areas of detail, I introduce to you the best BITS of Only War:

The Core Mechanic

Skipping the dice piles of the wargame or the recent Soulbound RPG, Only War requires rolls at or under a percentage, that percentage being a combination of ability, skill, context, personal modifications, target modifications, and other tidbits.

There is a boatload of math here, each modifier being a range from -60 to +60, in increments of either 5 or 10. Ouch.

BITS is here to save the day for us: Genericize the difficulty, add minimal additions to rolls, and roll 2d6 at most.

Difficulty	Tier	Roll	Example
Easy	1	5+	Rabble, conscripts, untrained guards, small beasts.
Moderate	2	7+	Professional guards, foot soldiers, trained.
Hard	3	9+	Specialists, veterans, brutes, large beasts.
Very Hard	4	11+	Captains, elites, killers, vicious beasts.
Legendary	6	13+	Demi-gods, lords, titular mortals.
Near Impossible	10	15+	The gods made flesh, god-like beings.

Let us skip the rest of the mechanic since most all of it can be replaced by BITS for faster, easier play.

The Stats

Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, Agility, Intelligence, Perception, Willpower, Fellowship.

9. 9 stats, not counting Wounds (health), Fatigue (disadvantage on things when fatigued), Sanity, Corruption, and different Speeds and Sizes and Encumbrances.

Humans can recall only 7 things (+/- 2) in memory, so including 9 stats and more about the character being played plus the equipment of that character plus what is happening with comrades plus what is happening in game… No good.

BITS mitigates this with Body, Insight, and Thought. Here, we can take an average of the Only War stats that correspond (each stat averages to 31%: 2d10 + 20), and giving stat points for what percentage comes out:

BITS	Only War Stats
Body	Weapon Skill Strength Toughness Agility
Insight	Ballistic Skill Perception Fellowship
Thought	Intelligence Willpower

Heroic Mode	Alt. Semi-Heroic	Alt. Human-ish	Alt. Humbling
0-16% = 1 17-50% = 2 51-82% = 3 83-99% = 4	0-39% = 1 40-69% = 2 70-89% = 3 90-99% = 4	0-49% = 0 50-69% = 1 70-84% = 2 85-94% = 3 95-99% = 4	0-2% = -4 3-8% = -3 9-16% = -2 17-27% = -1 28-71% = 0 72-82% = 1 83-90% = 2 91-96% = 3 97-99% = 4

I won’t drawl on the trainings/skills a character has either – as is the typical, there are too many. So instead, base skills (the “Specialties” of BITS) on the role the character plays: Are they a pilot? A driver? The vanguard? A mechanical, biological, or software technician? A psychic (aka magic) user?

Let the character role decide what the character can and cannot do with advantage because it is safe to assume the characters are competent to some degree.

As for health, using Soulbound‘s B+I+T+S or a 2d6 or even d6 can lead to different experiences, whatever the game should “feel” like at your table:

Health	Kind of Play
B+I+T+S	Heroic, 1-to-16 range
2d6	Semi-heroic, 2-12 range, average 7
d6	Deadly, 1-6 range, average 3-4

The Fun BITS

A brief here before the next sections: What follows are the parts of Only War that really stood out to my design-eye.

These mechanics either are fully formed and standalone, require minor tweaks, or are great inspirations for BITS. Keep in mind that the following may not be 1:1 representative of Only War, but at least has a basis from the work done there.

Notable: Supply Lines

Or as the game calls it, “logistics.” Characters can get any gear they want, but they must request it and they must roll to see if it arrives.

Gear is gear – every game has equipment. Yet no game yet come across has quite this wartime mechanic of supply lines! (Band of Blades may come close – it has been awhile since reading up on it.)

Logistics shines because depending on who the characters are, what their army group is, where the battle is taking place, and how the war is going overall changes what is likely to be available.

When it comes to bad logistics rolls, an army group isn’t left to sticks and rocks. A saving grace is that every regiment has its own stock of basic kit, a class of weapons and items they have in spades. Not fancy, but an army won’t be for want!

The implementation is as math-heavy as the rest of Only War. A route BITS can take may look like:

• Every player may attempt 1 requisition between missions, adding their Insight stat to how they barter / promise / beg / threaten / steal for it.
  • If the players are in retreat or in a break-neck push ahead, requisition cannot happen.
• The effectiveness of the item is the base challenge of the roll (tier 1 quality = 5+ roll, 2 = 7+, etc.).
• The whole squad can get basic infantry gear; heavy or specialized infantry gear or vehicle parts must be rolled for one at a time while acquiring a single vehicle increases the challenge of the roll to the next level (e.g. a tier 1 scout vehicle becomes 7+, not 5+).
• Advantage to the roll if winning the last battle by a landslide (utter destruction of the enemy), the next mission is “the big one,” or the item is part of the “standard” for the group. Disadvantage if the previous mission was a real beating for the characters, the next mission is a full wartime evacuation, or the item is especially “exotic” (i.e. alien, heavily modified, experimental, part of a different military branch [not the army], etc.).
• Apply other boons or banes based on the conditions of the field, for example:

+1 to Roll	-1 to Roll
Fresh Shipment / Overstocked	Base Recently Raided
Friendly Industrial / Fortress World	Backwater / Naturalized / Enemy World
Session 0 (Before Entering War)	Base Depot / Facilities Destroyed
Longstanding Base (1+ Year)	Trivial Forward Operating Base / Camp
Winning the War	Losing the War
Deadly Next Mission	Minimal Enemy Force Expected

Why not include the requisition of support as well during the mission? Being able to call in a tank company, have a friendly regiment on the flank, rely on air support, or signal an artillery barrage all adds to play for sure!

And of course the Game Moderator (GM) can choose if a piece of kit is even available to be rolled for – a super-heavy battle tank may simply not be around on a cut-off backwater of a warzone!

Notable: Regiment Creation

Creating an army and the soldiers who play a part in it is =superb=.

Only War walks a player through the fighting style, homeworld, standard kit, commander disposition, and even lore of the battle group they wage war on behalf of. All this before a character is made!

The regiment establishes kit, special rules, and bonuses players may (or sometimes must) apply to their characters and operations. Everything from vehicles to resources to tactics become available, as per these examples from the game:

Regiment	General Features
Cadian Shock Troops	Poster-boy soldiers. Solid firearms and a squad APC. Dadv to disobey orders. Lasguns and launchers.
Catachan Jungle Fighters	Lone-wolf guerilla fighters. Extra health. Adv in ‘nature’, Dadv cooperating. Flamers and knives.
Death Korps of Krieg	Gas-mask-wearing attrition and siege group. Adv to push forward, Dadv to fall back. Artillery.
Elysian Drop Troops	Death-from-above. Anti-grav devices, maybe a dropship. Not that strategic (less Thought). Carbines and bombs.
Maccabian Janissaries	Zealots. Solid firearms and more advanced weaponry. Good Insight, Dadv to fall back. Cannons and plasma.
Mordian Iron Guard	Armored regiment. Get a tank and combat drugs. Dadv for actions taken while in the open. Small arms.
Tallarn Desert Raiders	Mounted hit-and-run. Scout walkers and extra HP. Extra movement when ambushing others. Launchers.
Vostroyan Firstborn	Elite backliners. Extra stat point, solid standard gear. Dadv on lower-born social tests. Sniping and auto guns.

There is so much more…

I might make a blog post that is a direct get-started conversion where homeworlds, commanders, et. al are covered in depth – for now, group creation in Only War is now the basis for BITS!

Notable: Vehicles

BITS lacked a firm understanding of how to implement vehicles before Only War. Now, the inspiration:

Vehicles are a unit type above Infantry – Infantry have a disadvantage to harm them (though perhaps some bonus +1 or the vehicle tier for shooting the broadside of a barn, e.g. large vehicles?).

Further, vehicle BITS tiers (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10) add a ‘0’ to the end of the tier for the vehicle’s hull health, e.g. tier 1 becomes 10, 2 20, etc.

Same ‘0’ applies to vehicle-grade weapons. A tier-1 effectiveness vehicle weapon does 10 damage, and so on.

Combat vehicles are either without extra protection or are “armored,” impervious to non-explosive, non-anti-armor weapons.

Optionally, a scale can be introduced to equate with infantry protection where it reduces incoming harm:

Armor	Equates to
0	No extra protection, canvas, open
1	Light infantry, flak fabric, car door
2	Medium infantry, plates, car frame
3	Heavy infantry, carapace, car engine block
4	Super infantry, powered armor, combat vehicle
6	Heavy combat vehicle, mobile weapon platform
10	Ancient / Exotic / Experimental protection

For every tier, a vehicle gets 2 features aside from whatever motive (wheeled, tracked, or walking) it uses. A tier 1 scout could have any of the following, up to 2: mounted infantry weapon, mounted vehicle-tier weapon (counts as 2 systems), a fireteam carrying capacity (4-6 infantry, heavy weapons and ‘larger’ personnel counting as 2 infantry), armored, hover engine, turbo engine, slaved cyborg operator, damage control, amphibious functions, large replacement parts, etc.

Notable: Force Fields

AKA “shields.”

Only War defines how BITS handles these kinds of ‘magic’ fields of protection!

First, they do not overlap. Only the strongest field applies at a time, though pop one, a second might be in place.

Next, effect tier must be equal to or greater than the field itself, otherwise all of the effect is negated completely (a tier-1 pistol and a tier-1 vehicle gun are treated the same). But fields remain ‘ablative,’ in that once damage arrives that is on par with the field, the field only goes down 1 point in effectiveness in exchange for stopping all damage. The new effectiveness – until recharged – can then be attacked by lesser-effect weapons.

Example: A tier 4 vehicle-mounted shield takes 2-damage small-arms fire. The damage doesn’t make it through and the shields hold at 4. (Attention is drawn to being shot, however!)

Then an airstrike arrives, doing 4-damage to the shield. The shield decreases in power to 3, stopping all of the airstrike’s effect. But a second airstrike arrives, again at 4, dropping the shield now to 2. A small-arms rifle takes a potshot for 2, now able to damage the shield down to 1.

As the vehicle’s turn ends, the shields recharge back up to 2. This stops pistols, but won’t stop rifle or heavier fire more than twice.

Should actions against the field critically succeed when the damage is at or above shield power, the field ‘pops,’ reducing to 0 to stop the attack (and if especially egregious, a GM might think the field has run out of power or requires maintenance!).

The above is a tentative scale of field shield power, though it could be split into Infantry-Vehicle-Ship-Planetary scales:

Tier	Example
1	Personal Field
2	Combat Field
3	Containment / Wall Field
4	Vehicle / Building Field
6	Spaceship Field
10	World Field

Notable: Augments

Robot eyes, regrown limbs, spare organs? The idea that any character can be saved from extreme physical harm – at a cost – is stellar.

Replacement parts are noticeable, but as standard do nothing ‘extra.’ Requisition, time, and medical and technical talent can be spent to, say, breath in any atmosphere, run faster, lift heavier, punch harder, see farther, or just have laser eyes 🙂

Notable: Levels of Damage

In a strange way, Only War has both a bean-counting health system (typical of RPGs), and an abstracted level of wounds.

The level of damage affects a character’s healing rate and NPC comrades. Once more severe levels are healed, it is easier to heal the rest. My take:

Only War Harm Term	Approx. Harm	Notes
Critical	< Body stat left of life	7+ Luck test each day of complete rest to heal 1.
Heavy	> Body in harm, > Body left	Each day of complete rest to heal 1.
Light	Harm <= Body	Each day of no further harm heals 1.

This seems a little heavy handed – why not heal 1 based on the context of where and how healing is done like most other games? (D&D “rests” come to mind.) Regardless, state is something to keep in my own game-design back-pocket for a while yet.

In the meantime, a handful of health is optimal (certainly not more than 20), perhaps spacing states at half- and quarter-life marks, rounding up. (Again, analyze this another time 🤷‍♂️)

Let’s consider NPC comrades:

Notable: NPC Comrades

Every player character in the game is supposed to have a “comrade,” someone who follows them around, follows orders, and provides support. (Excluding some chosen roles during character creation.)

Having a battle-buddy is nifty, though comes with caveats. It bolsters the number of soldiers to make a squad, provides some mechanical and narrative flexibility, but also adds a greater burden on the GM to track yet other NPCs. I am a bit on the fence with these kinds of henchmen, so it needs further investigation.

NPCs are either unharmed, wounded, or dead – there is no middle ground! Nor excess tracking of health. A single hit of any caliber reduces the NPC’s state, though extreme harm (in excess of the NPC’s effect tier, or double the tier or more?) should count as at least 2 hits.

When healthy, they take orders, can do tasks on their own, and generally support the player character with a +1 ‘help’ to rolls.

State	What It Does
Unharmed	Great. Sticks around.
Wounded	Cannot run (‘Slow’ speed). Would assume they have Dadv or reduced effectiveness. Takes a week of rest to heal.
Dead	Not doing great. Mark the name down, when and how they died. Get a new comrade back at base.

BITS will explore adding a fourth state, “critical,” where NPCs could be carried back to base for saving, or left behind to hold back an onrushing tide!

Only War lacks a “lookout sir!” rule; a comrade can intercept incoming fire on behalf of their leader. Rather, only when doubles are rolled when targeting the player do these NPCs get hit. This is messy, so BITS adds “lookout sir!” when a hit would kill the player character and not otherwise hit the NPC (an explosion would hit both characters regardless).

Notable: Compatible With Other Games

Blows my mind that more games fail to include integration or conversion specifications with other titles. Maybe it is the problem of ownership and copyright, should a system such as D&D combine with Mörk Borg by name 🤷‍♂️

In any case, Only War fits itself nicely alongside other titles in the Warhammer 40,000 RPG line. The game is thorough with the mechanical tweaks and also cautious with the theming, reiterating what Only War is meant for versus the ‘feel’ other titles expect to provide.

–

2600 words, and barely scratching the surface of Warhammer 40,000 Only War!

Like fitting a foot into a too tight shoe, a great feel and look once there after putting in the work. That is what BITS is – a tight, sleek frame for the games that go in, running like a charm ~

Only War is no different. While BITS applied some of its principles to help Only War conform to a more concise feel, Only War gave as good as it got. Multiple points of inspiration came from Only War that BITS is already applying in game drafts soon to be shared!

What are you taking from BITS of Only War? The war tracking? Army building? Force fields? I want to know – share your insights and this post and we’ll meet again in a bit! Cheers ~

Age of Sigmar: Soulbound is a cornucopia of cool game design concepts I have either been working on in BITS or am adding.

Heck, the idea of “Soul” or a spirit to go along with mind and body has provided “Insight” to BITS! (We will talk about this in a minute.)

So needless to say, this Warhammer game is very, very well put together. I am humbled by it while it is my honor to adapt the system to 2d6 (2 6-sided dice) BITS play!

1. The Core Mechanic
2. The Stats
3. Character Creation and Archetypes
4. HP
5. Gear
6. Wealth
7. Acting
8. Hiring
9. Size
10. Closing (Un)Notables
11. Bonus: HP Deep Dive

The Core Mechanic

Soulbound rolls a pile of d6 whenever some re-/action is dangerous or otherwise consequential. Each d6 needs a certain face value or above to count as a success, then a certain number of successes are required at or above a difficulty target to count as having been accomplished.

Roll X dice. Y or more of those need to be at or over Z to succeed in the action.

A normal difficulty is two successes, while the face values and number of dice to roll are determined by skills and abilities.

Since Soulbound heralds from the Warhammer wargame, it makes some sense to keep piles of dice around, the same piles of d6 the wargame uses. HOWEVER, this turns out to be one of the weakest parts of the system in my eyes.

Lots of deduction leads to lots of dice leads to lots of math and I and BITS really will have nothing to do with it.

* throws dice pools out the window *

* goes out, picks up dice so as not to litter *

BITS carries on with 2d6 with tiers of difficulty. The only additions come from a handful of stats and few if any other factors. Minimal rolls, minimal math, maximum speed and ease of understanding. To recap:

Difficulty	Tier	Roll	Example
Very Easy	1	5+	Rabble, conscripts, small beasts.
Easy	2	7+	Guards, foot soldiers, trained.
Moderate	3	9+	Professionals, veterans, brutes, large beasts.
Hard	4	11+	Captains, elites, killers, vicious beasts.
Very Hard	6	13+	Demi-gods, lords, titular mortals.
Godly, Near Impossible	10	15+	The gods, god-like beings.

Advantage, disadvantage, and criticals get a deep dive over on “BITS of D&D” – go check it out after this. For now, a recap ‘vantage in BITS:

Advantage lets you optionally take the highest 2d6 die and use its value twice. Disadvantage takes and doubles the lowest which you must use.

Criticals apply even before ‘vantage when rolling double face values on the 2d6. If the unmodified face values sum is above the target number, it is a crit success, below, a crit failure. Either way, something extra happens, usually an immediate extra action, double the effect, a bypass of protection, or similar based on context.

The Stats

Body, Mind, and Soul (BMS) is all the stat tracking Soulbound brings and I couldn’t be happier.

Body details the combined strength and nimbleness of a character. Mind is of course the intellect, but also accuracy. Soul is a relationship with the divine and protection against corruption. Each ranges in value from +1 to +4 in modification to rolls.

For all intents and purposes, BITS has no changes here 🤷‍♂️ Body is Body, Insight is Soul, Thought is Mind. I would only expand the range of stat values (-4 to +4) and add social challenges to each stat (BITS does this with Body intimidation, Insight charm, and Thought reasoning).

Heck, I am envious at how well BMS works so well, yet BITS includes an abstraction of Skills, something Soulbound includes only in support of the pile-o’-dice mechanic it comes with. Let us touch on that:

Character Creation and Archetypes

Character creation is very straightforward – select a Race (aka species), select an Archetype (aka class), then select a gearset.

The races are classic WH: Age of Sigmar folk. Tree people, elf-likes, humans, dwarf-likes, angels, etc. What race is chosen determines what archetypes are available.

There are generic and race-specific archetypes. Whichever is chosen, a set of stats is assigned automatically (e.g. B 1, M 2, S 3). From there, a small bundle of gear is available for selection. A special ability may be applied for the archetype too.

BITS fits this to a tee – flat stat allocation, descriptions of the species and the character’s role in life, gear packs, and Skill abilities… No change. These are intuitive 1:1 conversions.

HP

I am so hyped for how Soulbound keeps characters functioning and alive. The solution?

Sum all stats (B+M+S) together. BRILLIANT. BITS is “borrowing” this (B+I+T+S).

Additionally, a character is not dead at 0 HP. Instead, they take on ever-egregious wounds, the number being half the total HP. (This works out to about 3-4 wounds per character.) Wounds have a part in BITS as scars and the eventual crippling of a character, but I forgo elaboration here.

This would be it, but this design choice struck me so hard, we ought look in on the math. See more at the bottom of this post in the “Bonus: HP Deep Dive” section.

Gear

Heads up: The following may include my own design commentary without me realizing it. Notes got mixed together, so consider the following as Soulbound optimized for BITS!

Nothing special for armaments: Weapon effect (e.g. +0 knives, +1 swords, +2 greatswords) in SB is added to the number of successes which translates to damage. BITS sees this as all value above the needed difficulty results in damage. Doable!

Degrees of Success (DoS) is effect. Need a 7+ and roll a 9? That is 2 effect + whatever the scale of tool is, such as +1 for a sword, equaling a total 3 effect.

Armor merely reduces the amount of damage sustained. Light 1 armor allows sneaking. Medium 2 has no banes but disallows or disadvantages sneaking. Heavy 3 is loud enough that anyone nearby will hear the character virtually no matter what. BITS could expect a Super-Heavy 4, that belittles movement and action (reduction, delays, disadvantage).

Shields give +1 to defensive rolls (+X for the shield isn’t bad), but BITS includes additional options:

• Make shields ‘ablative’ (destroy 1-point of the shield to negate all of an attack).
• Subtract from effect like armor does.
• Give advantage to defensive rolls, but include the ‘ablative’ option too.

Regardless, expand the types of shields that can be carried:

• Buckler 1, can be strapped to shoulders and forearms and still be effective.
• Round or Kite 2, must use a hand or be put on the back to carry.
• Tower 3, must use a hand to carry.
• Wall 4, cannot move without wheels or another carrier.

Back to weapons: What is cool is the range which centers around “Zones“, i.e. general areas what have the same features in an approximate space (rooms, groves, a bridge, etc.).

• Close (within reach)
• Short (within the Zone)
• Medium (1 Zone away)
• Long (2 Zones away)
• Extreme (3+ Zones away)

Anything with greater than Close range when used in Close has disadvantage (e.g. a bow would be disadvantaged if shooting someone up in the archer’s face).

Wealth

A nifty spot in Soulbound is the holy healing water. Special water is the only way to humanely recover life and is the mode of currency in SB.

This is cool design – do you heal or attempt to buy things that will prevent the harm in the first place? Do you protect your wealth in slow-you-down chests, or carry them on your person within reach but also where they might be smashed?

Games like Metro have done this with required-yet-scarce bullets, so I like seeing the mechanic here. BITS isn’t off-the-shelf ready to conflate magic potions with economy abstraction, but a simple count of the number of water bulbs (X bulbs for healing and exchange) or an abstraction to amount of water available (1 for a bulb or two, 2 being gallons, 3 a pool of water, 4 a cistern, etc.) is doable.

Acting

SB goes for multiple actions in a turn, pulled from a pool of Soul / 2, regaining 1 at the start of the character’s turn.

BITS is not a fan of point tracking this way, so 1 action per character or group per turn is the way to go. A sample of options:

Action	Notes
Attack	Anything within range.
Run	Use the character’s Speed to move around different Zones.
Charge	Run and Attack, but have -1 on defense until next turn.
Call Shot	Head (-2 to hit, stuns), arm (-1, disarms), leg (-1, makes prone).
Defend	Any Attack or movement in or into your Zone has to go through the character first. Advantage given if using a shield!
Dodge	+1 to any defense, with advantage.
Flee	Attempt to escape the conflict.
Hide	A Body (or Mind) roll. Hidden from minds lower than the number of successes (e.g. 3 successes hides from 2 Mind seakers).
Shove	A Body roll. Success moves the target from Close to Short range. Critical success knocks the target prone.
-1 Speed Actions:	Climb, Crawl, Swim, Squeeze, Sneak

Mentioning Speed, it comes in levels:

• Slow – Must use an action to move inside the same Zone.
• Normal – Free to move within the same Zone, 1 action to move to adjacent Zones. (Hand-to-hand combat uses this to get within range in the same Zone.)
• Fast – Free move into 1 adjacent Zone, 1 action to move elsewhere.
• Immediate – Added for BITS, this is a free move to any Zone within the play area.

Nothing moves slower than Slow unless the thing is somehow bound, grappled, or crippled.

Hiring

Probably the best hireling or mercenary list I have every come across. A list, with a few of my own for balance:

Craft	BMS	Notes
Cook	111	Has a week of hot-meal ingredients and gear.
Servant	111	Can carry and do simple chores or tasks.
Hunter	211	d6 meats a day in rural or feral environments. Knows trapping.
Veteran	211	Frontline fighter. Random weapon set.
Medic	121	Helps heal. May attempt field surgery on wounds.
Scout	121	Reports on an area at end-of-day.
Local	112	Knows the area, rumors, and is charming. May be an entertainer.
Scholar	112	Provides a bonus against corruption. May be a pilgrim.

Size

Warhammer is full of giant monsters, so size needs to play a part. Soulbound‘s rules are simply:

• A character can climb on any character sized above theirs.
• If in the same Zone as a higher-sized character, the smaller character(s) get stomped.

As for the kinds of sizes, BITS might scale based on if a size could eaten or swallowed by the next size up in 1 or 2 bites. Application:

• Sub-Unit (a tiny thing, much smaller than a human)
• Unit (a human, cart, can fit a company of them into a Zone)
• Sub-Zone (warhorse, large vehicles, can only fit so many – a squad – in a Zone)
• Zone (giants, airships, things that takes up an entire Zone)
• Multizone (truly monstrous)

Closing (Un)Notables

The meta-currencies of DOOM (how bad the world is failing) and Soulfire (i.e. miracles) can provide a nice intervention and reflection of player action on the world, but BITS shies from these kinds of currencies.

We also haven’t touched on personal and group experience, nor mounts or terrain in how they play. Nothing wrong with these – merely need to wrap up here!

All in all, Soulbound is an excellent game full of profound ideas. While its heritage of coming from a wargame can slow it down, BITS is the system to bring the game back to a fast, streamlined pace!

If I missed anything in the last ~1800 words, please say so – BITS, Soulbound, and your own games will be better for it. Cheers ~ 🎲🎲

Bonus: HP Deep Dive

Of all the archetypes, the average sum is 7.6 HP (3-4 wounds). The stat values to get there are distributed approximately:

• 1 = 16%
• 2 = 36%
• 3 = 28%
• 4 = 20%

Tangent: Soulbound is a game about being a champion, a hero in action and ability, a blessed-by-the-divine entity of power. That is clear in the high-powered stats!

If rolling for stats, with a d6, the above 1-2-3-4 comes out about as 1 = 1, 2 and 3 = 2, 4 and 5 = 3, and 6 = 4. Because of the ‘heroic’ setting, using Soulbound‘s content to replicate other difficulty tiers is just a shift of the results (Gods mode added for flavor):

Stat Value	Wretched	Mundane	Heroic (SB)	Demi-God	Gods
1	1, 2, 3	1, 2	1	1	–
2	4, 5	3, 4	2, 3	2	1
3	6	5	4, 5	3, 4	2, 3
4	–	6	6	5, 6	4, 5, 6
Avg. HP	5	6.5	7.5	8.5	10

Love it when the match comes together! BITS of Soulbound, as with “BITS of <anything>,” works. Cheers to that and cheers to your SB games!

Two years ago I introduced BITS, a tabletop RPG system that is fast, emergently complex from base concepts, modular, and simple to pick up.

Liter rules than Dungeons & Dragons-like simulators, crunchier than story-foremost Powered By the Apocalypse types, yet not a traditional Old School Revival, the system has been polished by thousands of hours of study and play.

After a lot of poking and prodding, I think it is time we took a look back on two years of development.

Before Getting to the New Stuff

Let’s take a look at what BITS used to be to get a full appreciation of how far the system has come.

Body-Interaction-Thought System was the first draft. The core mechanic comes from two six-sided dice (2d6) plus a modifier to get at or above a tiered step list of threat ratings, while all scores or values aimed to be 0 to 4 🎲🎲

Originally BITS was based off of a simplification of D&D (this is before I learned of the streamlined Old School Revival movement). Body was meant to be the average strength and conditioning of a D&D character, Interaction dexterousness and interpersonal prowess, and Thought as wisdom and intelligence. Any special skills were merely implied by the class a character had, such that rogues would expect to be sneaky, paladins could call in holy favors, and wizards knew magic.

The system tries to tie together any and all subsystems into the 2d6 mechanic, or more specifically, having two dice and a rough guess of the quality of the actors and actions in a situation. Thereby, a subsystem from one BITS game or conversion can be near-seamlessly dropped into another or tweaked with the assurance that 2d6 exist somewhere in play.

Reflection

Going after D&D was an appropriate start. Not knowing about OSR helped create a design language all my own instead of dropping my work to adopt something ‘close enough.’

Yes, D&D was (and still is) a monster of a system. It is the godfather of all RPGs, “D&D” now being synonymous with “tabletop RPG.” To tackle a full conversion of all the subsystems of D&D (which are by no means consistent, complete, or without a lot of internal complexity) was naïve hubris 😅

As a personal project, BITS introduced me to innumerable games, systems, principles, methodologies, and techniques for putting together not only games, but books and writing, too.

Using the masterclass of game making that is the internet with a search bar, lots of playtests, sample game writing using the system, and the excellent help of many friends, BITS evolved.

A New Kind of RPG

Let me introduce BITS:

• Body – Physical swiftness and brawn. Great for getting about to hit things, so the ‘fighter’ and ‘rogue’ stat.
• Insight – General perception, whether of the environment, another person, or a far-off target, and dealing with it appropriately. The ‘bard’ and ‘archer’ stat.
• Thought – Mind, intelligence, mental strength. The ‘magic’ stat.
• Skills – Also can be called “Specialty.” This is what sets a character apart with special rules or traits that enable a greater depth of customization.

Each of the above get added to a roll of 2d6 to get over a threat level, that level describing how difficult it will be to act against and a large chunk of the stats for the threat:

Tier / Health / Harm / Quality / Value / Durability	Roll + BIT	Description
0	–	Too easy. Nothing. Junk. Absolutely helpless. Might be dangerous in groups, but only with a disadvantage. Lower 50% of a population if counted at all.
1	5+	Easy. Commonplace. Padded armor. Domestic animals, the unskilled, conscripts, thugs, minions. Best served in hordes. 20%
2	7+	Moderate. Specialized or with skill. Well prepared. Guards, hired muscle, footmen, boot camp troops. 15%
3	9+	Hard. Veterans. Been there, done that. Leaders, mercenaries, elites, heavily armed. 10%
4	11+	Very hard. Best of the best. Natural killers and masters. Grizzly bears, walking tanks, spec ops, knights. 5%
6	13+	Demi-gods. Kings, lords, grand masters, and titular characters. The people that lead wars or have ended them personally. 1% or less.
10	15+	Godly. May never appear!

Not all actions have to be about physical battle. Instead, there are three kinds of trial a character may face threats in:

• Combative – physical violence between creatures.
• Environmental – surviving dangerous conditions.
• Social – convincing others to act.

Each of the above can exist within each other. I digress –

Many of the other questions that I wracked my brain on originally are saved by the modular nature of BITS. Truly a la carte, all options can be put or replaced until the desired game feel is achieved:

• Weapons – Flat damage as the weapon’s threat tier? Or the degree of success? Need kinds of weapons, like piercing and pummeling types?
• Armor – Ablative? Adds to defensive rolls? Reduces damage only? Cares about the kind of damage applied?
• Gear – How much? Need to pick it specifically before an adventure or can call it out at the time it is needed (“quantum”/Schrodinger gear)?
• Health – A flat value? The sum of all BITS? Rolled for? What about mental health or social composure?
• Experience – Milestones? Personal goals? Player party goals? Gained by gold and treasure?
• Economy – Wealth is counted piece by piece? By wealth tiers? Is selling and buying at the tier of the gear, or is it a tier less and more, respectively?
• Turns – Rolled for? How often does it change? Does a BIT apply? Sequenced or simultaneous?
• Partial Successes – Are double-twos automatic fails no matter what? Double-sixes successes? Especially bad or good outcomes? What about rolling exactly the threat number?
• Magic – Do failures come randomly, target the caster, or fizzle out? Anyone can use it or is a specific skill / origin needed? Is there a limit on how many times to use?
• et. al

BITS is a joy to work on. So flexible, I have details and drafts on multiple genres (e.g. sci fi, fantasy, modern day, giant robot, etc.), applications to different popular media (e.g. Star Wars, Star Trek, Avatar the Last Airbender, etc.), and one-page conversions for other game systems (e.g. Mork Borg, D&D, PBtA, Soulbound, Wrath and Glory, etc.).

I am darn well giddy to share with you these things this year!

A Take From the 4Ms

I noticed how in the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe, everyone was relying on their augmented bulk, their psionic mind, or their control of machines to get what they want.

Thus bore Muscle-Mind-Machine, a draft of the draft of what became BITS!

I could not get 3M to work the way I wanted to as a universal system, so BITS became the next evolution.

But what about the Ms? While working on BITS and reading other game systems, the Ms evolved too into 4M:

• Muscle – strength, toughness, dexterity.
• Mind – intellect, insight, mental or magical power.
• Mettle – force of will, morale, charisma, daresay “soul.”
• Mastery – trainings, skills, abilities, special considerations.

This latest came inspired by Warhammer’s Soulbound, a recent WH RPG that leverages soul-power to bring out divine and demonic judgement. I take that to be a more generic “soul” so that it becomes flexible for different situations where personality matters.

We can add more Ms too: Mortality (health, HP, ability to keep resisting), Memory (background and connection network), Move (how quickly to maneuver), Means (the gear or a ‘growth’ or ‘augment’ that takes up a gear slot), etc.

But that is neither here nor there 🙂 BITS is my go-to, but it is nice to know 4M (or 8M!) is there in my game-making toolbox.

The Future

There are always questions in science. Art is only put down, never complete. Game design is both an art and science, thus there always is more work to do.

As mentioned, I am tackling one-page conversions and game’s set in familiar-though-adapted settings. Put them here on the blog, gather courage to upload them on storefronts, buy some cover art – you know, business things 🙂

Let me know if you would care to try out BITS yourself! Especially if I haven’t put the one-pager out from the blog backlog 😁 Until then, enjoy your games and cheers to what you make!

You’ve seen me talk a lot about BITS, an original rule set for tabletop role-playing games (RPGs). It’s about time you got some more insight to it!

BITS, or Body-Interaction-Thought System, came about first when a colleague and knowledgeable friend mentioned how cumbersome the classic Dungeons and Dragons type of old-school RPG systems were.

I sat on this problem for awhile, pondering ways to automate and streamline the work of the world building, dice juggling, and stat monitoring. Nothing really “worked”…

Until I noticed that the universe of Warhammer 40K was made purely of the elements of Muscle, Machine, and Mind 🤯

Looking at other RPG systems, I saw the 3Ms everywhere. All game systems divide into physical ability and performance, manual dexterity and know-how, and mental strength and intelligence.

For reasons I care to let you read or listen about, the 3Ms became the 4Ms, “Maybe” joining the ranks and becoming a dump section for anything narrative in a game.

I tried 4Ms for a few more things, but I couldn’t get Maybe to always feel “correct”, but I sure as heck wasn’t going to give up Muscle, Machine, and Mind!

What resulted was BITS. Body relates better to physical performance, Interaction better for manual work and social charisma, and Mind handling magic and intelligence. And in these things, any attributes or stats in any game can be put 😎

Further, I discovered a common theme of ‘4’ showing up in games, where every number could be normalized on a 0 to 4 scale. Thus, any single BITS value is rated 0 to 4 on a linear growth curve (0 to 1 is short, 3 to 4 is long), meaning any fictional creature in a game has at maximum a total of 12 for their values, while any single value is at most 4. (Great for balancing and restricting the dreaded Power Creep!)

BITS uses 2 6-sided dice (2d6) for every roll to see if a fictional creature succeeds at what it wants to do. The expectation is to keep things simple – 2d6 are easy to add together, they are the most common dice type, and having everyone roll only 2 dice for everything is elegantly simple (checkout the probability curve that games such as the famous Powered by the Apocalypse system uses).

When rolling, the “additions” to the roll are kept in a very exclusive list:

• Add a single BITS value (or none, in the case of pure Luck rolls), 0 to 4.
• Add 1 for any other creature that spends valuable time helping your creature act.

“Maybe” hasn’t gone away completely, either. The current test-case conversion of D&D into BITS has “Luck”, a fallback for whenever a roll needs to happen that doesn’t seem to fit into the Body-Interaction-Thought set, or is an event that a player would have no chance to react to. It means no values are added to the roll.

But what does a person need to roll to succeed?

“Threat” is the WIP term for the success threshold. Every creature and environmental obstacle has a threat which corresponds with their total BITS value (if a creature) or difficulty (hazards). Any action against this creature or hazard must roll (with additions) at or over the threat. (Easy, ya?)

Scaling threat has been a major undertaking with BITS and may not be done yet, so it goes for now as follows:

• Roll a 5 for easy actions.
• 7 for moderate.
• 9 for hard.
• etc.

Players max out at 13 threat. Simple!

The rolls may be altered (rerolling for dis-/advantage) or may lead to automatic successes/failures (doubles over/under threat).

Regardless, how effective the action is deals with how much over threat a roll is. Using damage from a weapon as an example, weapons only have a low base damage X from 1 to 4. However, for every degree of success over threat, that’s extra damage to add! No extra rolling for damage, no variable dice for damage, and a counterbalance of using tools and picking fights!

If you take damage, you must have health! Or, as it is in BITS, “wounds”, which you add any damage to (reduced by an armor value). Once you reach your maximum number of wounds, well, 💀💀💀

I aim to have wounds traceable with 6-sided dice for easy counting, so maximum wounds have been necessarily low… I will need more playtesting later-/post-pandemic to understand the implications of that, but you get the drift – everything is to be easier, simpler, and more accessible 😉

When your creature acts is also streamlined. Everyone rolls, adding their highest BITS value. The highest final number goes first, but then if the result is even or odd, that changes the direction of the turn order (to the player’s left or right). If it’s the Game Moderator’s (GM) turn, they take a turn for every creature not controlled by a player.

The GM does more than moderate – they arbitrate, describe, listen, and help ensure the quality of the game. They’re also the player I aim to develop the most automation tools for 😁

Together, the GM and other players take on adventures meant to be self-contained missions that offer opportunities to pursue other adventures. The players gain XP for trying more difficult adventures, which increases their BITS values, which leads to getting more treasure in the adventure, which allows better equipment to be bought, which allows more difficult (and epic!) adventures to be undertaken, which gives more XP. #Cycles

And that’s a quick and dirty introduction to BITS! I have grand expectations for this theme-agnostic system, but am taking humble steps to make sure the foundations are solid before releasing the full set.

After reading all that, what are your thoughts? Any glaring holes in this design? How would you improve it?

Share your impressions and let me know if you’d like to be an alpha-reader. (Don’t worry – the system is split into short, topical guides.)

Take care of your own goals in September! Look forward to more design talk of BITS in the following weeks 😃 Cheers ~