VI·VIII·X KUP RPG

I think I have already written more than once that I was almost sure that my idea was not original and it was nearly impossible that no one had already come to my conlcusion! What is surprising is that this happened nearly 50 years ago, more exactly in April 1975! The fundamental concept underlying the KUP model has already been discussed by Sandy Eisen with Gygax himself! That is absolutely outstanding! Ok, let's explain this with more details and order. On the RPGGeek boards, Chris B (kudos to Chris!) pointed me out that this is not the first time someone has though about a game 'veiled' to the players. He kindly provided me with the post of a fellow who is working on a game with rules completely hidden to the players (if I understood correctly). I have left him a request to get in touch with me and exchange our opinions about this 'model'. Mine is definitely a less radical view than his one (at least from what I got reading his post...) but I believe we have the...

In this deep dive some insights about how a character can suffer damages, what is the kind of injuries from damage and what is the game mechanic which rule the death of a character. Let’s start from the first topic: damage! A damage is anything affecting negatively a character, be it caused by either a weapon or a different cause like a poison or magic. In VI·VIII·X any damage is defined as a negative impact on a character’s stats. When a character suffers a damage, this means that one or more stats decrease and the character is in the position to act with a reduced score in that stat from the following turn; as a consequence the character gains the state of ‘injured’. Now, let’s better focus on what an injury is in the VI·VIII·X game. According to the damage suffered, the GM defines what are the affected stats of the character (this happens only when it is not already defined in a rule, needless to say). The damage is exactly the same amount of the decrease in the related stats, the r...

This deep dive aims to provide an overview on the base game mechanic of VI·VIII·X the action resolution check, or ARC. This is used in most of the rules, whenever a character is asked to carry out an action: for combat, both melee and ranged, for non-combat actions (e.g. hide, ride, swim and so forth) and for spellcasting, both arcane and divine magic. In order to perform an action, the character uses one of his skills, the used skill is tied to an ‘unknown stat’ (or US) and the later is tied to a ‘known stat’ (or KS). Therefore, the starting point for the application of this mechanic is the 3-level stat framework of the character (in case here is a deep dive on this topic). Whenever a character needs to succeed a test, the player has to perform an ARC. The ARC is the result of 4 addends: The score of the KS (a value between 1 and 10) The score of the US (a value between 1 and 10) A modifier which is the outcome of the player’s roll for the ARC a value between -3 and +10) Additiona...

After long time I am back to complete the ‘deep dive’ posts with a new topic to be analyzed: the stats of a character. The overall concept of stats is not far from the one used in the most famous FRPG: a character is described by scores according to certain definitions. In VI·VIII·X any character is defined through 3 levels (or layers) of stats: the first level has a broad definition, the second level shows a more detailed definition up to the third level where a precise activity is defined. The 3-level framework is built by means of relationships between the stats of each level: a 1st level stat is linked with two 2nd level stats and every 2nd level stat is tied to several 3rd level stats. This framework helps to explain that the level of granularity of the definitions for each level goes from a general one (for 1st level) up to a detailed one (for 3rd level). This explanation helps to outline the framework where the 1st level stats are called ‘Known stats’ or KS (because they are kno...

I'm probably overwhelmed with too many to-dos and topics to follow and I'm getting stuck in the mud in too many topics and activities. I have to review priorities to try to refocus on my project and avoid getting lost in a thousand streams of discussions or thoughts. During these weeks, the most tiring ones for me, I had to spend nearly all my efforts on  'marketing' the game... As a summary, I had a wide range of feedback, from purposely destructive (hopefully for no reason since I don't know the people who wrote me) to truly encouraging. Among all, I feel like leaving a tip to Jamie Hardy, a veteran of this industry who has provided me with his invaluable advice. Jamie wasn't artificially positive, far from it: he wrote in a serious and straightforward way what's wrong with my marketing approach. I sincerely thank him and now I will try to put into practice everything Jamie suggested. Now, what is making me stuck is my natural marketing ineptitude: althoug...

First day of 2023! This post to wish all of you my most sincere wishes for a great year! As a first day, I need now to focus on two sides: manage the playtest and develop the remaining part of the project. I have to be grateful to anyone who helped me with suggestions for my game in the last weeks. Since I published it, I got several comments and one of the things I need is to rationalize all the info and interactions I had so far. Therefore, I will review the current proposal for the playtest and try to be more 'market oriented'! In addition, I will take up again all the works and give them a go... the upcoming task will likely be the 'How to run a VI·VIII·X KUP RPG' series here on these pages! I hope that this year will bring to the light at least one or both books: the expanded rules and the setting! Thanks to all of the friendly fellows who bought, downloaded, read and joined the playtest! ...and thanks to those who will come as well!