Quote from: Spinachcat;1082940How does that work?

So instead of gaining a class abilities you gain items that grant abilities. Eg my pirate thief for example had: a rope & hook that granted +3 on climb checks, custom weapons that granted +2 damage bonus, a pretty cloak that added +1 Cha, a mask that gave +3 on deception, and a lucky charm that granted +1d6 once per day. I dont remember the character having any abilities herself. I cant remember now if this is a classless game, I think it is.

I just got a copy of the full rules, and I really like what I've seen so far.

Has D&D Standard Stats - Str/Int/Wis/Dex/Con/Cha.  You get six points to distribute amongst the stats, each point is a +1 modifier (so this system does away with the actual Str value and keeps the modifier).  D20 + relevant stat vs target number.  Easy shit has a -3 to the target number, hard shit has +3 to the target number.  No XP, you improve by grabbing better shit.  I don't like that.

Hit points divided into "Hearts" of 10 HP each, just a different way to note.  Tasks can also be given Hearts, you accomplish these with skill checks and rolling "damage" dice against them.  Has a couple different ways to handle it (reduce the task's HP to 0 to accomplish it, or if you don't like that then one successful roll gets it half done, a critical success gets it done in one go, a fumble means you done fucked up son and maybe make it worse).  Damage dice depend on what you're using, for fighting or for task management.  I like that.  If you get to zero hit points, roll a d6 and that's how many combat rounds you have to live.  Roll a d20 every subsequent combat round - if you roll a 20 you stabilize, you also stabilize if a buddy runs up and makes a Wisdom or Intelligence check.  Roll a 20 on other checks and you get to roll normal damage/effort dice plus an extra d12.

Class-based, but it's not "heavy" class if that makes sense (there's no "not a Thief?  Fuck no you can't hide in shadows, only a thief can do that, what are you, stupid?").

A lot of solid GM advice - some good stuff there whether you want to use this system or not (how do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  How do you build a huge-ass sandbox campaign setting?  One session at a time.  You don't have to have the whole thing set up ahead of time, just get together what you need for the next session).

Describes two settings in the core book, a standard fantasy thing and a sci-fi setting.  They are serviceable.  There is a Worlds book with more if you somehow find yourself bereft of setting ideas.

Monster section, about 32 pages.  Some familiar faces there, and a cool tribute to the Rot Grub image from the original Monster Manual.  Advice on how to make your own.  

80ish pages of sample adventures, with a half-dozen adventures.  Two fantasy, two sci-fi, a Mad Max thing, and a Cthulhuesque adventure.

Bunch of random tables at the end - locations, monsters, loot.

"Simplify D&D" is a pretty good description and I dig what they're trying to do here.  Seems like something that will work well for the younger set.  I'm going to work up something and find some volunteers.

I've been a follower of Hank for a while now. He's a great guy, and he's known for having really cool off the wall D&D ideas. Ways to make setpieces, how to add pressure to combat, stuff that you can take and add to any D&D or RPG game you're running. He's also one of those guys that really clicks and bonds with his community; a lot of ICRPG's stuff was made with the back and forth of his community.

Hank likes fast, simple and to the point, combat oriented (or at least, deadly) style D&D games. I don't know if he ever played OD&D but he'd probably love that. ICRPG is his take on that kind of game, with simple rules meant to drive gameplay and make it easy to run for the GM. His rules focus on impact -- no tons of fiddly little bonuses here, just big differences that drive the stakes. Characters come and go, death comes quick. He personally makes the art for all his stuff and it has a cool aesthetic to it. He also creates a bunch of adventures you can use, and his YT channel has him walk through his process for creating them, explaining his philosophy behind the game, so you can learn how to do it yourself too.

All in all it's a great, simple game, to play when you want to sit down with your friends and play some beer and pretzels D&D.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1083383I've been a follower of Hank for a while now. He's a great guy, and he's known for having really cool off the wall D&D ideas. Ways to make setpieces, how to add pressure to combat, stuff that you can take and add to any D&D or RPG game you're running. He's also one of those guys that really clicks and bonds with his community; a lot of ICRPG's stuff was made with the back and forth of his community.

Hank likes fast, simple and to the point, combat oriented (or at least, deadly) style D&D games. I don't know if he ever played OD&D but he'd probably love that. ICRPG is his take on that kind of game, with simple rules meant to drive gameplay and make it easy to run for the GM. His rules focus on impact -- no tons of fiddly little bonuses here, just big differences that drive the stakes. Characters come and go, death comes quick. He personally makes the art for all his stuff and it has a cool aesthetic to it. He also creates a bunch of adventures you can use, and his YT channel has him walk through his process for creating them, explaining his philosophy behind the game, so you can learn how to do it yourself too.

All in all it's a great, simple game, to play when you want to sit down with your friends and play some beer and pretzels D&D.

I don't recall hearing him make references back to OD&D, or 1E AD&D.  In one of his videos, he even refers to his copy of the Rules Cyclopedia as being 2nd Edition AD&D.  He does mention 2E and 3.5E in his videos; along with PF and 5E, of course.

To sum it up, he likes simple, mechanically driven, high stakes, high lethality games where you play as "big 'ol badasses."

There's no dying to sewer plague in Hank games, but you will probably get incinerated by a dragon's fire breath.

By mechanically driven, I mean he likes to have a lot of the ambiguity that grinds gameplay to a halt in most RPGs/DMing dealt with by mechanics.

Outside of combat, instead of people talking over each other and wondering what to do, you still take the game in turns. It works fast in practice. Everyone then knows what's going on.

Almost every combat has some sort of timer in the form of a hazard or something else, to add urgency and direction.

It's not combat for combat's sake, but to address some other goal.

Basically, lots of stuff you can add to your normal D&D games as just good DMing, but in ICRPG the rules are built around it.

Oh, to address advancement.

You don't really level up, you just are you. However, you find powerful treasures over the course of play. This is so you can get stuff that's normally out of your league, and it'll take the place of class features, in essence. However, much like RPG Pundit's random class features, the items you get are not under your control, so you'll always have something different going on. Furthermore, you can lose the loot due to a lot of hazards, creating the "advancement treadmill" that D&D normally has, since you'll always be on the lookout for more treasure as a result.

You don't HAVE to play it that way, but that's just what he recommends.

My favorite videos of his, are the 3 he did on Dungeon World.  I have watched the crap out of those; as well as his videos on Homebrew, and 2D vs 3D for miniatures and terrain.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1083394By mechanically driven, I mean he likes to have a lot of the ambiguity that grinds gameplay to a halt in most RPGs/DMing dealt with by mechanics.

What do you mean by "ambiguity that grinds gameplay to a halt" and how it is "dealt with by mechanics"?

Quote from: Tod13;1083435What do you mean by "ambiguity that grinds gameplay to a halt" and how it is "dealt with by mechanics"?

He likes to assign DCs and make a challenge out of a lot of things that would ordinarily be handled by freeform RPing, so there's something solid to hang your hat on. He doesn't like it when you're just aimlessly adrift without a goal or without structure.

For instance, let's look at table talk. A lot of the time, outside of combat, when it comes to PCs participating in the game, it boils down to the loudest or most aggressive voices dominating the table. Other more quiet people might never say anything or have all the spotlight focused on the louder people. This is something that has to be adjudicated by the DM. In ICRPG though, you also take turns -outside- combat so that everyone automatically gets a chance to do something.

Basically, ICRPG isn't the kind of game with "downtime" scenes or gameplay. It's an action game where every time you sit down to focus on the game, it's with the focus of an action scene or some constructive goal being pursued. I mean, I guess you can run it that way, but that's not what the game is built around. It's a game about awesome and deadly encounters.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1083440He likes to assign DCs and make a challenge out of a lot of things that would ordinarily be handled by freeform RPing, so there's something solid to hang your hat on. He doesn't like it when you're just aimlessly adrift without a goal or without structure.

For instance, let's look at table talk. A lot of the time, outside of combat, when it comes to PCs participating in the game, it boils down to the loudest or most aggressive voices dominating the table. Other more quiet people might never say anything or have all the spotlight focused on the louder people. This is something that has to be adjudicated by the DM. In ICRPG though, you also take turns -outside- combat so that everyone automatically gets a chance to do something.

Basically, ICRPG isn't the kind of game with "downtime" scenes or gameplay. It's an action game where every time you sit down to focus on the game, it's with the focus of an action scene or some constructive goal being pursued. I mean, I guess you can run it that way, but that's not what the game is built around. It's a game about awesome and deadly encounters.

Cool. Thanks!

This is sounding quite different and interesting.

Still sounds like traditional RPGing, but from a new angle.

Here, watch this. He's got a lot of videos on his channel that deal with the game, and a lot that have cool ideas but weren't made for the game but end up influencing the game anyway.

[video=youtube;tZ1Lg1l1pHY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ1Lg1l1pHY[/youtube]

In this video he goes into the key parts of the game.

Also, the way he runs his games, and the way ICRPG is set up, is basically every session is a one shot. That doesn't mean that it is always totally stand alone, but even if it's in a campaign, the campaign is more like a series of one shots linked together. That way every night is a night when you get together and do something that has a climax and some finality to it. A lot of the mechanics are thus geared towards creating impact and not having it turn into a kind of wishy washy soup.

Thank you mAcular Chaotic!

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1083579Here, watch this. He's got a lot of videos on his channel that deal with the game, and a lot that have cool ideas but weren't made for the game but end up influencing the game anyway.

[video=youtube;tZ1Lg1l1pHY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ1Lg1l1pHY[/youtube]

In this video he goes into the key parts of the game.

Thanks for posting that. It was interesting--normally I can't stand videos, but this was OK.

I like the "room target" and the no-derived-statistics, but then he starts adding easy/hard and complexes it up. Our homebrew solution is that all rolls are opposed, one polyhedral die on each side. Bonuses/advantages go up one dice size. Penalties/disadvantages go down one dice size. Players meet or beat opponent's roll. Each dungeon/adventure has a base die size with bosses (monsters or traps or whatever) having larger die sizes.

Hit points/hearts makes some sense. We use the die sizes as attributes and hit points, to keep numbers lower and keep no-derived-statistics.

"Effort" makes more sense when you know he limits how often something has effort. I still want to figure out a way to simplify combat and actions to keep them interesting and reduce the time spent in combat--but still keep the ability to have stuff like the orcs and players miss each other for four cycles and start talking to each other. Part of what we did was make damage fixed rather than rolled and not have any math except >=.

We love polyhedral dice. And we don't mind mixing them up, and like it better (see above description of opposed single polyhedral rolls). We use percentiles for anything not linked to character or opponent traits. (For example, one character was collecting cutlery--so to see if a room had cutlery when it wasn't pre-determined, I rolled a percentile that the player had to meet or beat for there to be cutlery.)

I think death is overrated. I know a lot of people really like easy-to-die in RPGs. We like failure, since one of the things we like best is building the character's personalities and interactions between PCs and NPCs over time. For our homebrew, for easy death, we just switch <=0HP as death for PCs instead of unconscious.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1083579Also, the way he runs his games, and the way ICRPG is set up, is basically every session is a one shot. That doesn't mean that it is always totally stand alone, but even if it's in a campaign, the campaign is more like a series of one shots linked together. That way every night is a night when you get together and do something that has a climax and some finality to it. A lot of the mechanics are thus geared towards creating impact and not having it turn into a kind of wishy washy soup.

Do you know of a video that covers "every session is a one shot"? I tried searching but failed. How long are sessions?

Yeah I am the same with videos, but he is very fun to watch. I had fun watching all his videos, and a lot of them have actual good ideas that I was able to apply to DMing. One being that there should always be some sort of pressure in an encounter (so you don't just sit around). His specific version is timers, using a d4 to signify a countdown to create anticipation and tension to something happening. Either more reinforcements, some terrain hazard, etc. I don't use it exactly that way, but the concept is a good one as it adds an extra dimension to each encounter.

He has other videos other than that one I posted that breaks down those concepts in more detail; that video is more like a summary of his other ones.

I don't know if he has one video in particular about the one shot concept, but throughout his videos he often explains it that way, and you can tell when he maps out his own one shots in some videos and explains how it works. You could watch some of those. I believe his sessions are about three hours each?

He's also very much a tactile style of DM, liking to have custom made terrain and figures. So in that sense, it's natural that you'll want a controlled set of encounters that follow a plan.