Continuing with the prompts from d4 Caltrops’s d100 Table of Topics to Blog About, I’m going to keep going through some of the rules-oriented ones as they pertain to my Iron Fist of the Hobgoblin King setting. In our Sunday morning Ptolus game, we play things pretty much straight as written. At the moment, I’m considering building Iron Fist as a Shadowdark hack, so the following are modifications to Shadowdark’s core rules.

7 – Are you working on your own System? What makes it stand out from others? The big question. And like so many people, I wouldn’t make my own system, but… I have little quibbles with Shadowdark. Not complaints or criticisms, in most cases, just things I would have done differently if I would have built it from the ground up. I think it’s a perfectly ordinary impulse in TTRPGs to put your own spin on an established system, and it’s always been the origin behind so many fantasy heartbreakers. However, I think games like Dolmenwood have put a new spin on the concept by tying the system tightly to the setting and its themes. That’s my goal here. Well, that, and working miniatures combat back into the game!

Backing up a step, when I was first conceptualizing the Iron First setting, I was split between Shadowdark and OSE. One thing I considered was writing the primary text in a system neutral manner and then providing conversion documents as sidebars or separate books. I still might do that, but I like the idea of committing and developing some setting-specific rules.

I’ve also been tempted by the core resolution mechanic from the Frostgrave family of games. In those, both combatants roll a d20, add their Fight or Shoot, and the higher total wins. you then subtract the target’s Armor from the total to determine the damage done. Easy, fast, deadly. I love it, but I might stick with systems that are more familiar to TTRPG players for now.

My goal is to keep my Shadowdark hack compatible with the original so that people could just pick up the setting and run it with the familiar rules set. However, we’re seeing just how tricky compatibility can be between the 2014 and 2024 D&D rules sets. Little things can become stumbling blocks or have unintended cascading effects. Hopefully the more concise Shadowdark rules set is easier to iterate on while maintaining as much compatibility as possible.

So what’s changing? First and foremost, movement and distance. One inch on the tabletop will equal 5 feet, and Shadowdark’s near will become 30 feet. However! There will not be a grid, we aren’t playing chess or checkers here. Get out a ruler, tape measure, piece of string, wargaming gauge, whatever it takes. Learn to love your curves!

Following on, if you move your six inches and the thing you want to do is one inch away, just move the extra inch. We’re here to do things, not come up short.

In a chase, roll a d6 each time you move. 1-2, move 5’ less than normal. 3-4, move your normal rate. 5-6, move 5’ more than normal. Maybe you can burn CON and risk exhaustion to consistently move farther.

Stealth and Hiding. I don’t want to adjudicate this on the fly, I want the dice to tell me if you snuck up on the guard or not. I think I’ll use the method that most folks I know fell into for 5e. Make a Dexterity check (with disadvantage if you’re encumbered past a certain point), compare that to the other creature’s Wisdom check (made at disadvantage if they aren’t actively watching), and meets it beats it. Where this differs from 5e is, you have to make a check at the end of your movement to determine if you remained undetected. I’m sure there will be trickle down effects, but we’ll sort them out in playtesting. There’s also the question of if when hiding you should roll each turn or be able to ride out your initial roll. Hmm.

Morale. Monsters will get proper B/X-style morale scores. The 5e-derived Wisdom check that Shadowdark uses just doesn’t make sense to me. A wise creature that succeeds on the check is more inclined to stay and fight? I just don’t see the connection there, and I can imagine lots of cases where it seems downright contrary. A morale score tells you if a creature is inclined to keep fighting when the odds turn against them.

Now will it be a d20 morale system like AD&D or a 2d6 system like BECMI and B/X? I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to think about how I feel about maintaining the unified resolution mechanic of the d20. B/X morale adds various conditional modifiers to the check. I haven’t seen anyone add more dice. What if when their leader was killed, the remaining bugbears added or subtracted a d6 from their morale pool? Or what if morale was always an unmoving target number, but different monsters got different dice pools to roll against it? That would be weird. Might be more complicated than helpful, but it seems worth investigating. Dang, certain character classes would have dice that they could add (or subtract) from morale pools. Hmm…

Treasure, XP, and Encumbrance. I’m not into vibes-based XP. Give me a solid number. Do the math, the bookkeeping, whatever. I don’t want to decide when you level up, I want your actions in the world to determine it. I do like spending gold to carousel or train as a requisite for gaining levels, so that will stay.

Similarly, I’m not into slot-based encumbrance. Now that we’ve reestablished movement in inches and feet, we can have a graduated system where your movement rate decreases depending on how overburdened you are. This also eliminates the judgement call of, “does this take up a slot?” I don’t know! I have other stuff to worry about, don’t make me decide! It should be easy enough to make a coin weight system that converts to slots. “Easy enough,” he says, ha!

But Wait, There’s More! Of course, a setting merits bespoke classes, but this is where I really want full compatibility with the Shadowdark core. You should be able to play a bog-standard fighter alongside an imperial legionnaire. Hmm, maybe I’ll make a subclass system? Each class will have a basic core, but subclasses get different talent tables.

I’m sure other stuff will come up. I intend to do a rigorous review of the rules text and see where I grind up against things or where the themes of Iron Fist could be reflected in the rules.