Spoor (Business Card RPG)

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A role-playing game. Interpret your choices and dice rolls in challenging and narratively interesting ways. This is a game to make your own and to incorporate you and your friends' preferences.


If you're interested in my design decisions and thoughts while making this, here's a deeper dive into the choices I made:

  • Priority was given to the overall aesthetic and design rather than specific mechanics or rules.
  • I love the "roll 3d6" feel when creating a character and I wanted to keep that feeling. To accomplish this and still fit within the space, I chose to do 2d6+1d6 for health and items. I liked the simplicity and familiarity of rolling 3d6 to create a character, so choosing two for your health and one for your items made sense.
  • I wanted to keep some normalcy with the Explore and Encounter concepts. 1-in-6 chances for Exploration stuff and 2d6 for Encounter reactions.
  • I decided to completely drop the typical ability score/modifier generation, and go with a situational 3d6 ranged outcome when executing actions. This felt perfect because 3d6 ability scores are commonplace, and it also fit right in with the progression of the previous ranges... 1d6 Explore, 2d6 Encounter, 3d6 Execute.
  • Health regeneration: Health isn't just "meat points" to me. It makes sense to fully replenish your health after taking reasonable measures to rest and recover. I also just like the freedom and simplicity of fully recovering when you and your party are ready to do so.
  • Attacks and damage: I like leaving the determination of a successful or failed attack open-ended. If you're actively in a fight and trying to attack, you're going to hit and do damage...so just attack and roll damage. If it is uncertain, roll 3d6 and determine how well that attack was executed. Simple and makes sense to me.
  • Item usage: I like usage die for consumable item management like torches and stuff. Conveying the classic usage die concept proved to be really hard in this format, so I decided to link usage of consumable items to the 1d6 Exploration rolls. I like how simple it is: if you're using a consumable item, then it will be expended on low Exploration rolls.
  • Magic: I chose to use a simplified version of my "Rogue Magic" system that I made for Rogueland. I like magic to be free-form and uncertain, so the resulting effects are open-ended and interpretable. I want to keep most of the spell casting mechanics up to the reader and allow for people to bring in their own assumptions and preferences with how magic works and where it comes from.

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**Printer friendly and color variants are included in the pdf.

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