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Rules

The Set Up

The rules below are listed in a unique order that allows the game master to create the level of realism they want in their individual games. First each section is given a Class from 1 to 6, which states how necessary the rules below it are for successful game play. Next, each subsection is divided into levels from 0 to 6 that denote how complex the given rule or system is. A 0 in either category denotes the simplest, most essential form of a rule, while a 6 represents the opposite end: complex and extraneous.

It's important to note that just because something’s of a lower Class or Level doesn't mean it's necessary for rules of a higher Class/Level. You should feel free to mix and match, but you should also make sure you aren't stepping on any toes. Entries dependent on a previous Level will generally say so.

Class 0: Degrees of Success

Depending on what level you run, there are anywhere from 6 to 400 possible degrees of success. The following table lists the degree and it's numeric value.
It's possible to play just on this first class, where the GM (game master) is final arbitrator of degree of success, and simply assigns a value and explains the results based of story telling, role-playing and logic.
Degree of Success Numeral Value
Fatal Mishap -200
Catastrophic Mishap -100
Disastrous Mishap -60
Severe Blunder -50
Blunder -40
Stymie -30
Abysmal -20
Minimal -15
Flawed -12
Erred -10
Trying -6
Poor -2
Weak 0
Passable 1
Moderate 4
Capable 6
Strong 8
Well Executed 10
Strong 12
Skillful 16
Flawless 20
Maximal 30
Incredible 40
Perfect 50
Superior 100
Unbelievable 200

Class 1: Randomality & Character Identity

Diceless Variants

Level One: Universal Dice Pools

In this version of the game, everyone rolls the same number of dice for all situations. The GM decides the number, but 2, 3 or 4 dice is ideal.

Level 2: Dice Pools as Character Levels

The character rolls the same number of dice for any given situation, but the number of dice is unique to each character, who is ranked from 0 to 6 in overall ability.

Level 3: Dice Pools & Skills

Each character is ranked from 0 to 6 in ten skills. Each skill applies to different situations. A 0 rank represents no knowledge, while a 6 represents total mastery. The rank assigned to each skill directly correlates with the number of dice the character rolls to generate degrees of success. Only the highest number in a die pool (all the dice rolled together) is kept. That number becomes the degree of success.
Skill List

Level 1: Single Die Type

In the most basic version of the game, all dice are of a single face value, probably six sided, but tens or twenties work best.
Rank/Die Correlations

Level 3: Dice by Character Level

The character rises up in die types, starting at rank zero and working up to six (or possibly 8, see below). Each character has a rank, and uses the die corresponding to their rank on all rolls.

Level 4: Dice by Ability Score

Similar to levels, the die type used is determined by a character's particular abilities, but unlike Levels, different dice are assigned to different situations. Their are 4 basic abilities, and each is ranked. When a roll is called for to determine the degree of success, the GM must declare both a Skill and Ability.
The Abilities
Alternate Lists for Skills & Abilities

Level 2: Universal Die Modifier

In this version of play, all dice receive the same bonus. The GM assigns this bonus, but it is generally equal to 1/2 the die maximum value.

Level 3: Die Modifiers by Character Level

Like the level modifiers above, the character progresses in Level ranks from 0 to 6. The characters level here is added to all his dice rolls.

Level 4-5: Specificity Through Die Modifiers

Each character assigns a Specialty to each of his Skills (or, if skills aren't used, their Abilities or Level). The GM than uses this Specialty to determine how much of a bonus the character gets to a given die roll. The Level 4 version of this rule gives all characters a single Specialty for each Skill with a fixed level of specificity/generality. The Level 5 version allows the character to assign Specialties with varying degrees of specificity/generality, based of a rank from 0 to 6. A 0 indicates no specialty at all, while a 6 shows an extremely broad specialty. How Ranks translate to levels of specificity can be seen here.
This task is this close to the Specialty Bonus to Die Roll is this fraction of the total*
Exact 1/1
Close 1/2
Similar 1/4
Not Dissimilar 1/8
Dissimilar 1/16
Unrelated 1/36
* If the result would be less than one, ignore.

Class 2: Character Creation

Level 1: Total Randomality

The character rolls a single D6 (or 2d3 or a d4 or 3d2, etc...) for all ranked abilities and fills in the rest.

Level 2:Templates

The GM creates a number of complete or almost complete characters using his own judgment. The GM can leave as much choice up to the players as he likes. Each player chooses a template and plays from there.

Level 3: Points

The GM gives the players a number of ranks that the characters can assign to various aspects of their character. All of the above traits would cost an equal amount, except for Levels, which should cost proportionately more (i.e. 10 skill/10 specialties means that pool or bonus Levels cost 10 for 1 rank, while 4 Abilities at a cost of two means that die levels would cost 8 for 1 rank), and Abilities, which should be two for one. Point costs should also vary if the GM is using wider or narrower lists, with the cost decreasing with the more available options. The GM may also have characters roll a random number of points.

Class 3: Time Scale

Level 1: Actions & Plays

An action, is a single roll of the dice. A Play is one game in one setting with the same basic story and set of characters.

Level 2: Scenes

A scene is a non-specific length of time that is linked together by a single idea or setting. Scenes move logically and are used as useful measures of time. Whenever the characters significantly change location, a significant length of time passes, or the attention of the story is shifted to a new element, a scene has passed.

Level 3: Acts & Parts

An act is a single story arc, like the chapters of a book or acts of a play. An act last as long as the major thematic or plot element remains the same. A part is a group of scenes that are interconnected or distinctly similar.

Class 3: Situational Modifiers

*Note: Modifiers for action difficulty are redundant, as a certain degree of success is inherent in difficult action. Failure and success should be relative to the pool involved and the action the character tried to accomplish

Level One: Negative Dice

Many of the below modifiers are negative, and should be treated as such when figuring degree of success. All skill, ability, specialty etc... dice should be rolled normally, as should all modifying pools, and the highest die should be retained as the degree of success, but if the die is from a negative modifier, use the negative degree of success listed.

Level One: Pain

A character suffering from pain would reasonably not do as well as someone in full health. Therefore, pain needs to be translated into a modifier that complies with the degrees of success.

To do this, the GM needs to assign pain dice pool, die types and modifiers to each individual character. How these dice are assigned depends on the Level of play used above, since universal pools, die types and modifiers should be carried over into pain. Higher levels though, do not need to be carried over, but they can be. Generally, the pool size will represent how constant and consistent the pain is, while the die shows how extreme the pain can become. Pain can be assigned Specialties (i.e. someone's hand could be in pain), or you can just use a fixed modifier or fraction of the maximum roll for the die type. Pain generally lasts for one scene.

Level 2: Injury

Injury differs from pain in two ways. a) It lasts for a full act and b) all Injuries are 'directed,' which means that Injury dice only count when the region or part injured is involved.

Level 2: Fatigue/Confusion

Characters can be assigned Fatigue and Confusion dice pools to represent both of these conditions. They work in a manner similar to pain, but should be treated as separate dice pools.

Level 3: Disease/Permanent Injury

Works in a manner identical to Injury (above), but it lasts for a full part, play, or applies permanently.

Level 3: Adrenaline

This positive pool can be taken at the player’s choice, and is rolled in favor of the character for the remainder of the scene, but at the end of the scene all of the character's Adrenaline dice are converted into Fatigue.

Level 3: Free Will

Works as Adrenaline above, but Free Will dice become Confusion.

Level 3: Fear

Characters may be assigned Fear dice for certain phobias. Fears are generally permanent.

Level 4: Will

The GM may wish to award players for good roleplaying. He can do this by giving characters Will Dice. Will act like Free Will, but at the end of the scene it just reduces to zero instead of going to confusion. A GM using Will may also want to assign Confusion dice for bad role-playing.

Level 5: Drama Dice

This rule allows the players and GM to escalate the stakes. Each scene the players are allow to give dice from an action roll to a center pot, which is rolled on all actions. This pot is rolled with all the dice the players have deposited. The highest die rolled in the pot is added to the character's highest die, wither it is positive or negative.

Level 5: Story Pool

GMs may wish to reward players for helping the game along. With this rule, players who provide play space, character sheets, visuals, props, aids etc... or otherwise make the game more enjoyable for everybody can be awarded dice that they may add to the size of their pool. Once these dice are used, they are spent, and they always increase the size of a pre-existing pool (i.e. if the character has a Combat of 3 and a Toughness of D6, and they add 3 from their Story Pool, then they roll 6D6 and lose three dice from their story pool).

GM may also wish for the players to have some say in the events of the story, and the Story Pool can serve this purpose. The characters may be allowed to spend Story Pool dice in between scenes, acts, parts and plays to make events happen within the game world that are not directly caused by their character. The cost of these events should be proportional to their impact on game play. (For example a purely role-playing event like 'my character gets asked on a date' should be cheap, while role-playing events that complicate game play (like 'my character gets married’) should be mid-priced, while self serving events (anything from 'my cancer suddenly recedes' to 'the main villain dies of a hernia') should be enormously pricey or out of limits.

Class 4: Advancement and Deterioration

Level 2: The Template Method

With this method, the players get to add a template's abilities to their character at certain fixed intervals (like the end of an act, part or play).

Level 3: The Dice Method

Whenever a character gets a perfect roll (i.e. all dice turn up the highest face value), or a totally botched roll (i.e. all dice turn up as ones), then the character gains one rank in the relevant skill, ability, specialty or level. Levels should only be raised if the other two categories are at their maximum. This raise only counts on positive dice pools, and does include the Drama Pool.

Level 4: Attrition

Negative pools that roll perfect or botch, change location as follows:
Pool Perfect Botch
Pain/Fatigue/Confusion Injury Confusion
Injury Disease Pain
Disease Permanent Injury Injury
Permanent Injury Nothing (optional: fatality) Disease

Class 5: Extended Mechanics

Mixed Abilities

Sometimes, no one Skill or Ability applies clearly to a situation. In these cases, the GM may choose to apply 2 or more Skills or Abilities to a situation. In a more realistic game, the player then rolls the lower of the 2 to determine success, but in fun/fast-paced games, the GM may allow the player too roll the best. Of course, there’s no reason why the GM can't arbitrate which is used depending on situation.

Contests

When 2 characters are set in direct opposition, the GM may only allow one to achieve success, and use the opponent's roll as a penalty to the overall success. Generally, the winner is the person that rolls the highest, and subtracts the lower roll from his success. This rule can easily be applied to group actions.

Class 5: Expanded Characters

Level 2: Special Powers

Special powers can be added and applied in a number of different ways. They can be treated as Skills or Abilities, or simply be a given that functions at the character's level. More specific and varied powers should be treated as Skills, while more general powers should be considered Abilities. Special powers should be well developed, with defined upper and lower limits.

It is up to the GM to decide if special powers should cost more than regular Skills and Abilities.

Level 3: Secondary Abilities

Some Abilities help define characters but do not hold as high a place as others in their range or applicability. They also function differently, setting the upper limits of success within a certain field.

Suggested secondary abilities include the senses (Audile, Olfactory, Spatial, Tactile and Visual) and the character's Large Size and Small Size, which measure the highest performance possible in tasks that require either, and change in proportion to each other.

Secondary abilities do not function like other abilities, in that they are always used as mixed abilities.

Level 3: Personality Traits

Depending on the GM's idea of where mechanics end and role-playing begins, and on setting, it may seem important to track the character's personality with various scores. All the options for dealing with this can be found here: Personality Traits

Synergy

Characters possessing similar Specialties may purchase Synergy between skills. In games were mixed skills work as limits; there are 2 ranks of Synergy. Rank 1 allows the character to use the more favorable mixed-ability rules, while rank 2 allows the character to add the degrees of success from both abilities into a single result. If the more favorable mixed ability rules are used, Synergy only has 1 rank which functions as rank 2 of the previous. Synergy should be bought separately for each ability.

Level 3: Background Traits and Negatives

The following traits can be applied to translate the positive and negative effects of the character's background on game play.
The all backgrounds should be assigned a pool, a die type and a die modifier in the manner of other traits. The first three can two can be rolled to see what aid (or hindrance) the character gets for a given Act. Ownership simply represents land and property, its usefulness (pool) and scope (die), and can be rolled whenever the property is challenged or could yield some reward. Debts should be rolled at the beginning of every Act to see if anyone comes to collect. The pool should represent how proficient and aggressive the collectors are, and the die can be translated into the in game worth of what the characters owe. Items are Positive Pools, as is Reputation (Notoriety is a Negative Pool). If using specialties, Items and Reputation should not work if their die modifier is reduced to zero.

PLayers can also by GM priced bits of information that will effect the flow of play, these might even include the other PC's secrets.

The following table shows how background costs usually compare to regular ranks:

Background Cost (Return) Fraction
Allies (Enemies) 1/2
Contacts (Competitors) 1/3
Ownership (Debt) 1/3
Reputation (Notoriety) 1/2
Items 1/4
Other negatives can be bought. The character could get points back for any of the negative pools listed above that last for more than a scene (With rank returns correlating with the permanency of the disability).

Level 4: Expanded Specialties

Characters with Specialties that reach rank 6 (most general) may have the option of starting a new Specialty that falls under the old one that he can work up to rank 5, he may then get another 'sub'-Specialty that can be worked up to rank 4 etc... until he has one Specialty at every level. This rule allows a character to really specialize and excel at a single Skill (or Level feature).

Class 6: Abjucations

The following rules are ways to use and implement actions and the degrees of success.

Converting Degrees of Success into dice pools

(Numeral Value's absolute value)=X number of points. Begin at the far left (Dice pool) and pay for one rank, then move right (die type then specialty) and buy one rank.

Attachments

People are often caught feeling things that they don't neccessarily want to feel, and another person's social status can go a long way in making us react to them differentlty than may be practical. Also, it is near impossible to just turn one's back on a long term commitment without suffering some deal of mental anguish and dismay.

To handle all these factors, GM may want to assign Attachment ranks to character's who have been affected by another's character's social tests. Attachment ranks run from one to six like normal ranks, though an average social success is not likely to yield more than 3 (up to 3, Attachment ranks should be cumulative between tests, beyond 3, they should not be), a good guide, the absolute value of the degree of success numeral value/3 should be equalto the number of points available to buy ranks. Each Attachment should have a type: Romantic, Friendship, Hatred, Fear etc...when a character completes a social test against another character, their success become ranks of Attachment (type), the rank is then used to determine the Will bonus or Confusion penalty awarded for acting in or out of accord with the Attachment.

Needs

People (and other living beings) need a lot to stay alive, active and at their peak. The following table shows the degrees of success for a (Athletics/Survival) Toughness roll. Each column presents the amount of each substance the character will require on the following day, so the roll should be made whenever a character goes to sleep 'for the night'. The food entry is listed in calories, the water entry in liters and the rest entry in hours. The last column shows a characters need to obtain addictive substances in doses. If the GM is using these rules on addiction, a (Humanity) Toughness roll should be made any time the character consumes a sizable amount of an addictive substance. The 'doses' should be thought of as a single 'hit,' pill, 'joint,' drink or the like.
Degree of Success Numeral Value Food (Cal.) Water (Lt.) Rest (hrs) Addiction ('dose')
Fatal Mishap -200 8000 16 24 10
Catastrophic Mishap -100 7500 15 23 8
Disastrous Mishap -60 7000 14 22 8
Severe Blunder -50 6500 13 21 7
Blunder -40 6000 12 20 7
Stymie -30 5500 11 19 7
Abysmal -20 5000 10 18 6
Minimal -15 4500 9 17 6
Flawed -12 4000 8 16 5
Erred -10 3500 7 15 5
Trying -6 3000 6 14 4
Poor -2 2500 5 13 4
Weak 0 2000 4 12 3
Passable 1 1800 3 11 2
Moderate 4 1600 2 10 1
Capable 6 1400 1 9 0
Strong 8 1200 1/2 8 0
Well Executed 10 1000 1/3 7 0
Strong 12 800 1/4 6 0
Skillful 16 600 1/5 5 0
Flawless 20 400 1/6 4 0
Maximal 30 200 1/7 3 0
Incredible 40 100 1/8 2 0
Perfect 50 50 1/10 1 0
Superior 100 25 1/12 1/2 0
Unbelievable 200 0 1/20 1/4 0
LARP GUIDELINES
If you see any errors, are confused on a subject or want to make any contributions please mail me: masqueradeball@hotmail.com