Posted on 2024-12-07

About

The Fenris Punk Abstract Rules System is intended to be system-agnostic, modifications, or extentions to any rpg rule system. The given Concepts should correlate to many existing games and the specific rules should allow interchangability with variantions to one Concept without necessarily changing the entire system.

Concepts

AC

An abstraction of character cover, armour and dodginess.

aka Armour Class, AvoidCasualty, Dodge, Defense, etc

Most games call this "Armour Class" but it does not necessarily involve or require armour and often also considers the quickness or agility or dodginess of the character.

Conditions

Types of character state used to describe temporary or permanant effects.

For more, refer to Conditions.

Conflict

A Conflict happens whenever a storytelling element does not automatically resolve itself.

For more, refer to Conflict.

Damage

Damage is the reduction of HP that can happen as a result of several events, such as an attack, a trap or a fall.

d6, d10, d12, etc

This notation refers to the number of sides on given dice. Dice are commonly used to randomly determine an outcome in role playing.

For example, if someone says, "Please roll a d6" or "Please roll 1d6" that means to roll one six-sided die. 2d6 means two six-sided dice, and so on.

DC

aka Attempt, Difficulty Challenge, Difficulty Numbers, Skill Roll, etc

A dice roll to determine if something happened, succeeded, missed, etc.

Advantage

This typically means to add more dice to a roll and take the best. So for a DC 3 with a d6, a player with Advantage rolls 2d6 and they have the choice to take the better roll of the two dice. For example, they roll the 2d6 and get a 2 and a 6, they can choose the 6 which means they succeed the DC 3.

Disadvantage

This is the essentially the opposite Advantage with the further clause that the player is obligated to take the worst of the dice rolled.

Dice Modifiers

A usually static number added or subtracted to the result of a DC.

Dice Pool

One or more dice in a DC roll, often rolled as count of the number of dice that meet a specific threshold rather than summing the totals of the dice.

Contrast with Dice Modifiers.

Exploding Dice

When rolling dice, if the player rolls the MAX value, they can roll another d6 to add to that roll. Usually this is perpetual, so a player who keeps rolling 6es in this case will roll until they get another number. Depending on the type of roll, this usually results in a large sum or a dice pool of successes.

HP

aka Hit Points, Health, Health Points, etc

An abstraction of character health, stamina, and/or luck.

Though not necessarily the case in all games, note that HP in Fenris Punk is typically non-negative; only record values less than 1 as 0.

Levels

A mostly qualitative unit of character progression that measures how good a character is at doing various things. Some games use "class" or "job" Levels and others use "character" Levels for the sum of multiclassing or mixing job Levels.

MAX Value

A MAX value for a dice roll, eg a 6 for a d6.

MIN Value

A MIN value for a dice roll, eg a 1 for a d6.

Stats

Stats indicate some kind of measure of how good (or in some cases bad) a character is at some sort of thing. For the abstract ttrpg, the base Stat is the Level which players can use to add either extra dice or modifiers to their DC. For most games the Level implies some set of stats.

At Fenris the kids isle employees say it comes from the world of baseball cards.

Turns

Most games use Turns to give an order to the players. The jaron related to Turns can vary quite a bit from game to game.

For more, refer to Turns.

Conditions

The world of ttrpgs uses the term Conditions to mean character state.

Afraid

This Condition happens usually when a character takes significant damage from something and becomes fearful of it. In this state, the character must keep away from the source of their fear otherwise they risk becoming Exhausted or fainting to become Unconscious.

Exhausted

This Condition means the character has overworked themselves either with damage, lack of sleep, or by some other means.

Exhaustion can accumulate or stack.

Injured

This Condition should reflect the damage type. So if a character receives a blow to the head they might have a concussion. Or if they have been bit by a shark they might be bleeding.

Injuries can accumulate or stack.

Some injuries result in permanent changes to the character, such as losing a finger. For injuries that result in immediately becoming Dead, such as a human suffering decapatation, address that separately from these Injuries.

Dead

In this Condition state the character is completely Unconscious and has zero HP. Only a medical expert, medical technology, or magical means will save them from oblivion and/or decay.

Dying

A Dying character usually has about 5 minutes to live. They must be stabilized, usually by first aid. Often this may reflect massive hemorrhaging or when a person has stopped breathing.

Unconscious

Unless otherwise noted, roll a die TBD by the ref and multiply the result for the number of hours until the effect wears off and character wakes up. If the character had zero HP they now have 1 HP upon waking up.

Conflict Resolution

When storytelling and roleplaying, differing opinions of ideas for what can or cannot happen or uncertainty about whether or not something would definitely happen are at the heart of most ttrpgs. We use conflict resolution to determine outcomes.

For example, if a character wants to dive into the water and swim with a heavy bag, they might need to roll dice or role play to determine whether they can both survive and hold onto the bag. Typical storytelling conflicts can or could happen between or among the following:

• Character vs self
• Character vs another character
• Character vs nature
• Character vs the supernatural
• Character vs the ref

Events

When making an Attempt to deal damage

Depending on the system, an attack might need to clear the AC threashold or the AC might reduce the total damage dealt to HP.

When receiving a relatively large amount of damage

The victim is immediately considered Dead when the damage received is significant, compared to some arbitrary threshold.

In some games, this threshold might be this:

Damage >= Current MAX HP + Current HP Current MAX HP + Current HP <= Damage Current MAX HP + Current HP - Damage <= Zero

When HP becomes less than 1

When the character HP is non-positive, they are Unstable.

This is a special Condition state when the character is at risk of gaining several other conditions most of which lead to becoming Dead. Unstable characters that are still Conscious have reduced movement and can only do a reduced set of actions.

Unless otherwise noted, flip a coin for each of these:

• Afraid
• Dying
• Exhausted
• Injured
• Unconscious

When receiving damage when the current HP is less than 1

Perform another check to determine if the character is conscious and also if they suffered additional conditions.

When giving first aid to a Dying character

There are many ways to perform first aid, many of which require an Attempt. Unless the method of first aid or the Condition explicitly state to the contrary, when the DC is equal to the MAX for the given die, the character wakes up with at least 1 HP.

Note that some methods of first aid, such as magical healing spells, migth completely restore a character to full HP.

When giving medical attention to a Dead character

There is no general rule to bring a character back to life. It will depend on the expertise of the medic and the method used.

Turn-Based Gameplay

Turn-based gameplay varies from game to game. The important part is to pick on and remain consistent.

Brief Background

Most games use Turns to give an order to the players and most war game ttrpgs use it specifically, though not necessarily exclusively, for combat or battles. Some games group turns into Rounds per a time period, such as every player might get one Turn in a Round that lasts 5 seconds in-game or in-universe. Other games just alternate based on some algorithm, such as chess which consistently alternates (note that we now know that Prouhet--Thue--Morse sequence provides fairer play). Some games have different parts of a Round, part one might determine the order of players, part two for changing position, a part three for interacting/fighting/etc.

Some games allow players to interrupt each other or react to something outside of their own turn. For example, Alex and Bobby are dueling. Alex successfully attacks Bobby, but Bobby has an at-will item that once per day allows an automatic success for dodging anything slower than the local speed of sound.

Some games allow all events during a Round to resolve before updating character state. For example, Alex and Bobby's characters duel during Round 1. Alex took their Turn first knocking Bobby's weapon to the ground, but Bobby still gets their Turn with their weapon before the state is resolved.

Some games determine Turn order every round. Some during every battle. Some during every gaming session.

The variant options go on and on.

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