Swords & Spelling (Round One)

So the game goes a little like this...

SWORDS & SPELLING
A Roleplaying Game of Furious Spelling Action in a Fantastic World Gone Garbled
by nathan j. hill

"Look yonder! Strange travelers astride a hill, watching with their cunning, dangerous eyes. Are these the adventurers that the Wizard Professor told us would come to save our fair land? I do indeed pray that their hearts will be rife with compassion for our tragic cause. Let us warm the tavern and entice these strangers to hear our predicament."

With warm beverages before you, the leader of this village, on the outskirts of the Spelled World, clasps his hands together and looks at you with desperate eyes.

"Oh kind adventurers. Our village and land has always been peaceful, orderly, and proper. We are simple folk, but alas, for several weeks, we have been set upon by vicious brutes who are eager to destroy our livelihoods and threaten our sanctity. They have names which no learned man can make sense of. They attack in rushes of incomprehensible madness. We do our best to defend our crops and herds, but they always take off with our best vowels. I fear, oh do I fear, that their madness will devour us and they will press on to destroy all that lies in their path. The great Wizard Professor told us that adventurers such as yourselves would arrive to assist our plight - will you aid us?"

Swords & Spelling is a fantasy roleplaying game of pure spelling action and wicked fun. Players take upon the roles of mighty heroes, saving a helpless town from being devoured by heartless beasts from the Unspelled lands. Will you lend your magic, sword, and skill to defeat them?

Basically, you defeat your enemies and perform daring acts of bravery by spelling words. This might be really cool for kids who want to practice spelling.

What You Need

You need to steal some scrabble gamepieces from your Scrabble set. Put them in a bowl or a pouch so you can draw from them. Then you need a notecard so you can write down your character's info.

Make Your Character.

First, come up with the basic idea. Are you a wordior, a spellingcaster, or a rogue? Are you heroic or cowardly? What are you afraid of?

Second, fill up your skills. You have 9 points to spend between three skills - Swords, Magic, and Skills. Swords is for hand-to-hand battling against evil consonants from the edges of reality. Magic is for using mystical power to spell words that, well, spell doom for your opponents. Skills are for non-combat things, like sneaking, hiding, climbing walls, and diplomacy. Distribute your points as you wish, but please note, if you want to be a Wordior, you should try to put more points in Swords than in other skills. For Spellingcaster, you should have more points in Magic than the others. For Rogue, more in skills...

Third, put down your golden word. Since you are starting the game, it should be 3 letters long. Whenever you or spell it out through an action in play, you automatically advance in a level, gain one more skill point to put where you see fit, then pick a replacement. Each time, you have to pick a word with one more letter. So after the first word is spelled, your next word would be four letters.

Fourth, this one is different based on which type of character you are.

For Wordiors, you start out with your trusted weapon, which is one letter, consonant or vowel. You choose. For each creature you kill, you can pick one consonant or vowel to keep, making your weapon all the stronger. This has no limit. With each action that you use your sword, you can use those letters and do not lose them.

For Spellingcasters, each day, you can "memorize" up to 4 consonants or vowels for use. Once you use them that day, they are gone, and you have to wait till tomorrow. Still, these count as extra along with whatever else you have. If you kill a magical Garble, your memorization quota will increase by one permanently.

Finally, Rogues always have a choice of letters. When drawing for an action, they always draw double and choose the best ones.. they put the rest back.

Finally, pick your name. It should be about six letters long. This is your life. When you take a hit, you lose a letter... when you are out of letters, you don't have a name and are erased!

Playing

This game is pretty simple. Your quest is to discover where the horrible beast of the Garbles are coming from and put an end to them, saving the village and possibly the world from its chaotic mispelling.

Dangerous and heroic actions require a spelling test. The GM either puts out the name of the vile creature you have encountered (with an equally vile name) or the name of the obstacle you must encounter. A player states an action of great valor, and then tries to put together a word greater in size than the obstacle or creature. If the word is greater in size than the opposing word, success! Otherwise, failure...

Damage is inflicted in this way. For every letter over in size, the opposing creature or obstacle is reduced by one letter. Once it is out of letters, it is gone, defeated, and dead.

Skills give a player a free draw of letters equal to their skill in use to use in the action.

Finally, at the beginning of play, each player can draw five free letters.

Once letters are used (except in some circumstances like the Wordiar and Rogue above), they are returned to the pot.

The Town

The Town can be a good place to rest up, regaining letters to your name after a day of rest.

Also, the town is in serious needs of strong letters like "t, r, m, n, s" and can be traded in for vowels of choice.

The Gulag
Somewhere out there... the Gulag awaits and the evil Spell Butcherer prepares to meet the Adventurers and put an end to their spelling ways....

Copyright Nathan Hill, 2007. Rough Draft No. 1.

So... there you go.