Going through some old CD archives the other day, and I found an honest to goodness Zen RPG. This has been of some contention here in the lab, people proposing RPGs based on Zen or old School (Chuang Tsu style) Taoist philosophy, so I thought I'd share it with you. It's called Unitstat, and the website that used to have it for download is currently defunct, but may achieve a positive reincarnation for the good karma it accrued hosting this ingenious little game.
I'll explain the rules. Get all your friend's dice and put them together. Pick a pile of dice such that if every die showed it's maximum result, the sum would be 60. If you're going to have a GM, he gets to pick enough dice to add up to 60 for each player.
Whenever two players (including the GM) have a conflict with how they think the story should go, they each pick a number of dice from their pile (without showing what they picked) and roll them. Whoever rolled the highest number gets the story to go the way he intended, but whoever selected the most dice to roll immediately gets to pick something else related at stake and decide how that goes down. If the highest is a tie, look at the next highest until the tie is broken.
Example:
Player: My character escapes from Azkaban.
GM: Throw down.
Player: I rolled six dice and the highest was a 5.
GM: I've rolled four dice and one was an 8.
Player: So I guess I don't escape, but how about, in preparing form my escape, I learned how to think clearly without happiness or hope, so the Dementors can't really sense me very well as I move around the prison.
That isn't quite it. There are three more rules.
- The GM (if someone decided to be the GM) has to roll more dice than the number of players unless the total of his dice could not add up to 60 or more. Then he can roll just like a normal player.
- After a roll, both sides switch dice. This game is obviously best if someone owns a lot of dice or if everyone's dice are really unique.
- If you were rolling for your character, and you rolled to do something that your character is all about (in the above example, if Harry was escaping Azkaban and flying factored into it in some way) then you do not switch your 1s. Any dice that you rolled that came up 1, you keep. Pretty handy rule if you selected a bunch of d4s for your pile to secure narration right for those challenges your character should rock at.
Since these rules handle narrative conflict (when two people disagree how the story should go) there is a clear time when dice should be rolled, and one dice roll can move the story forward by many years, or just a few seconds. Players who are really into the minutia of kung fu movies could really tear the story up, rolling back and forth describing how a particular fight goes. Heck, you could do that scene from Hero, when Jet Lee faced that dude and they fought the duel in their minds before striking a single blow.
Why, you may ask, is this game Zen?
First off, it addresses the 4 noble truths. Life is suffering in this game, but that isn't the end of it. You can win and still get screwed. Or you can lose and still come out on top, in a way.
Second, it has karma. If your narration tends to lead to entertaining or advantageous situations for the other players, they will lowball (roll few dice with more sides) you whenever they are in a conflict with you, in hopes that you will narrate more. Your good actions in the past lead to your character being "luckier" (in that he may lose, but things would still go his way) in the future.
Third, and this, to me is the most Zen / Taoist thingie about this game. You don't have a character sheet. For philosophies about no-self, and impermanence, I can't think of how a game could be Zen if it had a character sheet. People are always changing in every way. A character sheet just perpetuated the illusion of permanence. People are the sum of so many variables and decisions that you would not even expect would have any consequences. Whether or not they were breast fed impacts their psychology. The nutrition of one's grandparents when they were children affects a person's health (google epigenetics). To have a character sheet that limits the definition of a character to Strength, Intelligence, and some skills is a lie, it is a lie about how interconnected everything really is.
So just get rid of the character sheet. Sure you have a character, and that character has a name and is "about" something, but you could change what your character is about, or even your character's name under the right circumstances. Heck, you could change what character you are playing, and you don't have to switch your dice around at all. You keep that same pile of dice that you roll and trade with your fellow players.
Plus, the game is a Zen koan in terms of comparing it's length to other games. It is just the front and back of a sheet of paper. If I rewrote it, I could probably easily fit it on a pocketmod. If we can get in touch with Andrew Morris, who originally wrote the game, perhaps he, or I, will be able to post the game manuscript here.