My first one player RPG that never had a name but I managed to write 2 stories for it. Its more like a series of battles stringed together by a story than a normal role playing game but theres a bit of customizations when it comes to how you make your hero.
One Player Adventures
Rules
The player starts by picking one weapon and one skill. Each player starts with 4 health and 4 mana.
Once the player had given their character a weapon and a skill they are free to give the character a name and make up a history for them. The player then follows the story line and battles a monster; if they defeat the monster they gain a victory reward.
Battle Rules
Each monster has a number of health and 2-4 attacks, each attack has a number or numbers assigned to it. The player rolls a 6 sided die to determine which of the attacks the monster uses. Normally the stronger attacks are less likely to happen.
The player decides on odd or even then rolls the die, if they get what they picked they get to act first, in some story cases they may not get to roll. When fighting most weapon attacks are free but magic has a designated mana cost. When a spell is used its mana is marked off from the user. When a character is harmed by the monsters attack a number of health is removed and when the player deals damage they cross that number of health off the monster.
Effects
When a weapon or skill says evade then the next attack against them doesn't deal any damage, evading only works for one attack.. When an attack says poison then the player must flip a coin if heads then cross one health off the attacks target, then flip a coin again before the targets next action, if heads remove another health, if tails then the target is no longer poisoned. Each time the flip is heads then the effect last another turn until the flip is tails.
Should an attack say sleep then the target of the attack cannot act on its next turn. If a weapon says +(number) mana next to it, then the weapon adds that number of mana to the character.
Level:1 Weapons
Wooden sword 2 damage
Dagger 1 damage (evade)
Sling shot 2 damage (evade) 1 mana
Wooden staff 1 damage (+1 mana)
Wooden broom 1 damage (sleep)
Lute 0 damage (sleep +2 mana)
Level:1 Skills
Wizardry1 +2 mana
Fire ball 2 damage (evade) 1 mana
Thunder 3 damage 2 mana
Heal1 +1 health 1 mana
Pet dog flip coin (heads) 2 damage (tails) +1 health 2 mana
Pet cat flip coin (heads) evade (tails) nothing 0 mana
there was also a second level to the game which adds multiplayer element and stronger weapons.
One Player Adventure level 2 rules
All the rules for the first level of One Player Adventure are the kept the same, with a few added rules.
Multi member adventures
When the story calls for it you may add a new character to your party (the level is designated by the story), this new character is created using the same rules as the original character. Or you can contact jakesbazaar@yahoo.com for a pre made character that fits the story line. In combat the monster will trade off between which character it attacks, starting with the original character and moving the new character on its next turn to attack. The battle should flow like this.
monster>> attacks character one
character one>> acts
monster>> attacks character two
character two>> acts
monster>> attacks character one
ect. ect.
Armor
Armor is a type of weapon at adds health to the person who has it, the number of health added is show as +(the number of heath).
Level: 2 weapons
Rusty sword 3 damage
Helm of Truth +1 health +1 mana
Wooden plate mail +2 health
Wooden bow 3 damage (evade) 1 mana
Saber 2 damage (evade)
Level: 2 skills
Sleep (sleep) 2 mana
Heal2 +2 health 2 mana
Poison (poison) 2 mana
Pet ghost-in-a-jar coin (heads) poison (tails) evade 3 mana
Pet baby dino (heads) 4 damage (tails) nothing 3 mana
meh needs some tweeking but I'll post the adventures if i get some feed back...
g'night, pets
sign,
James
some ideas
Sounds cool. I like the fact that the rules are simple, but it has a lot of potential for adding more skills, weapons, pets, monsters, etc.
I would suggest you work some on translating what the mechanics do into what the players should be imagining. For instance, what does "evade" really mean? Is the character stunning his opponent, or holding off his opponent by waving his dagger in the opponent's face, or does he make a quick attack and then withdraw, making it impossible for the opponent to counterstrike? What's the pet cat doing that it helps you to evade--jumping on the monster's back? Being able to visualize the action makes an rpg crackle.
Combat examples always helped me understand rules better, and they can be a way to illustrate what the mechanics mean to characters.
I like that it's skill-based rather than restricting classes.
Why do monsters always attack first one player, then the other? I can see why some might do that (ADHD?) but smarter monsters will try to take out the weakest character first or take out the character who does the most damage first. Or even just attack the most aggressive, biggest, smallest, or closest.
This seems like something you can play solo, which is also pretty cool for people who don't live near other rpgers.