The Tao of RuleS Hacking

by Berin Kinsman

http://BerinKinsman.com

With special thanks to Graham Campbell, Xose Lucero, Skyler Brungardt, and Stacy Lang

The ROLPUNK Manifesto

ROLPUNK (one L, no E) is about pure,
stripped down, no BS tabletop gaming. Its about
taking your game back to its bare bones roots: play
a character, chuck some dice, period. Its about not
letting other people tell you how to play your
games. Its not about telling other people how to
play their games, either; dont be that fascist1.
Dont drink the Kool-Aid, man, not other peoples
and especially not your own. Its about having fun,
because if youre not having fun
youve discovered the only way
possible to do it wrong. Its about
embracing the do-it-yourself ethic of
the hobby and sharing your stuff,
even if its just with your own game
group. But its not about rejecting
stuff, dismissing stuff out of hand
because of whatever pretentious
filters other people have set up to
dictate whats cool and whats not
cool. Screw them. Reject attitudes,
not games. Its about accepting the potential of
everything, salvaging what works for you and
ignoring the rest. Its about shaping your own
identity as a gamer, about letting your group and
your campaign and the rules at your table take
their own form based on your creative needs.
Dont be a game sheep.

Introduction
Ken St. Andre once told me that one of his
major motivations for writing Tunnels & Trolls
version 7.5 was to make the game easy for him to
run at conventions. That's a great goal. As I've
gotten older I look at new game books and no
1 Yes, I know what fascist means. Now, do you know what
sarcasm means?

matter how brilliantly designed and appealing they

may be, my first thought tends to be "Ugh, I have to
learn all of that in order to run this?" I want a game
that's simple to run, without having to memorize
or at least bookmark myriad exceptions and
options and variations. This seems to extend to
settings, too; most of my friends seem to be
running and/or playing either generic fantasy
(T&T, Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder) or familiar
settings licensed from comics, novels or television
shows where you already know the
tropes and the story beats and how
things operate.
There are gamemastering goals that
I aspire to other than making it easy
on myself. The game's got to have
some semblance of substance, after
all. For years I've been trying to
write original systems to achieve
those goals, but more often than not
I'm looking at other systems and
thinking "That. I want that piece."
So, this article is going to be an effort to
Frankenstein together a homebrew based entirely
on salvaged bits of other peoples' designs that
fulfill my design goals. Along the way, I hope that it
serves as a primer for others who wish to do the
same.
Goal #1: Make It Easy for Players

When I run most games, the first thing I

tend to do is boil the core rules down to a onepage reference sheet that I can hand out to players.
If they grok the basics, or if I at least give them an
index to guide them to what I think will be the
most frequently asked questions, it reduces
interruptions during play. Of course, the best way
to do this is to pick the simplest system possible,

one with consistent rules. Risus: The Anything

RPG2, a rules lite system by S. John Ross
certainly does that. If it takes you longer than
30 seconds to create a character, you're overthinking it. You get 10 dice. Make up clichs
and distribute the dice, but nothing can be
higher than X (with X depending upon the type
of game you're running; never more than 6). So
you end up with dwarf (3) cleric (4)
brewmeister (2) footballer (1). When you do
dwarf stuff, roll a number of dice equal to your
dwarf rating (3d6), add them together and beat
a target. Joyously simple. Easy to run, easy to
play. Because the system is so simple, it's easy
to hang other rules hacks on. For the core of
this experiment, then, I will be using Risus.
Goal #2: Promote Roleplaying

Sometimes, I think Risus is too simple,

and I want a little more nuance. I tend to think
of Fate3 as Risus's bigger cousin. Fate's a bit
more complex than Risus, and sometimes
harder to explain4. Yet I've always seen its
system of aspects as little more than clichs on
steroids. They're clichs you can do more with.
So, I'm going to hack in rules to Invoke, Tag,
and Compel clichs.
Invoking a clich is going to be a
function of hero points, which I'll cover in the
next section. For those not familiar with the
term, to invoke a clich means "I'm going to
use my character's clich in a strange and
unusual way that somehow gains me some
advantage". This often translates to "wait a
minute, Mister Gamemaster, as a dwarf
wouldn't I know X?" or "as a viking, shouldn't I
be able to do X even though it's not on my
character sheet?".
2 Get it free at http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm
3 Also free, at http://www.faterpg.com/
4 And yet, I try. See the Appendix: Explaining Fate Aspects

The Tao of Rules Hacking

Tagging is going to be a function of the

target number scale. Again, I'll get to this, but
you're starting to see how I plan to integrate
various things. Tagging, for those unfamiliar
with the turn, means generating a clich out of
thin air either by rolling really well or using
what's around you. "I attack the orc and rolled
really high; Mister Gamemaster, I would like to
tag the orc with 'Off Balance' so that the next
person who swings at him gets an advantage".
Or, "I spend a point and tag the room with the
clich 'There's a chandelier you can swing on",
so I can use my 'Swashbuckler' clich and swing
on it".
Compelling is going to work exactly as
in Fate. It's basically the gamemaster invoking
the downside of a player character's clich.
"Hey, look at all that mead... surely stopping
for one little drink won't hurt" I would say,
compelling the player's dwarf clich. If the
player runs with the compel, he gets a Hero
point to spend later. If he wants to ignore it, he
can spend a hero point and move on.
How does this promote roleplaying?
Well, it's more than just rolling dice, hitting
things, and rolling damage. It encourages and
rewards players to be creative and to do
interesting things with their clichs.
Goal #3: Give Players Control

One thing I hate, as both player and

gamemaster, is being entirely dependent on die
rolls. I like to be able to nudge things in the
direction I want them to go, at least
occasionally. Hero points, also called action
points, drama points, bennies, and a plethora of
other names, depending upon the game system,
allow me to do that. Once in a while, I can
spend a point to fix a bad roll or influence a
story direction. Often enough that I don't feel
railroaded, not so often that I'm railroading the

The Tao of Rules Hacking

whole game.
In this rules hack, you start the game
with one Hero point per clich. This seems like
balance. If you went with 2 clichs, rated at 6
and 4, you get 2 Hero points. Not a lot, but you
have higher-rated clichs. If you take 5 clichs
rated at 3, 2, 2, 2, 1 you get 5 Hero points. you
can do a lot of stuff, but you're not particularly
great with any of it, so Hero points will help.

Hero Point Economy

Something I like about the Primetime
Adventures5 roleplaying game by Matt Wilson is
the idea of budget. There's an economy to hero
points, basically, only so much to go around. I
also like the idea that players, not just the
gamemaster, can reward each other when
someone does something they like. My rules is
going to be that there are a number of hero
points in a pool in the center of the table equal
to the number of hero points the players start
with. If Bob gets 3, Stan gets 2, and Janey-Sue
gets 5, then the pot will have 10. When you
spend one, it goes back in the pot. When you
gain one, it comes out of the pot. You can give
other players a point from your own stash, of
course, and might want to do that when the pot
gets low. If one player is hording, the other
players might encourage him to spend some. It
builds a group dynamic.

Cascading Success
Here's something I'm lifting from three
sources: Savage Worlds6, Doctor Who: Adventures in
Time and Space7, and a little indie game called
5 A game where you create and play television shows! Not a
freebie, but you can buy it at http://www.dog-eareddesigns.com/
6 The Explorer Edition core rulebook is under $10 for a
universal system. http://www.peginc.com/
7 The officially licensed game from Cubicle 7
Entertainment, designed for younger and/or less

Wushu8. It's heavily blended, but it draws from

all three.
In Savage Worlds, the target number is
fixed: you always want to roll a 4. This hits the
goal of "make it easy". Want to hit the cannonfodder orc? Roll a 4. Want to hit the megapowerful boss monster wizard? Roll a 4. You'll
hit, and the might kill the orc but do nothing
special to the boss. But you hit, and it's easy to
remember. The nuance comes in increasing
degress of success; for every increment of 4
(e.g. 8, 12, 16, etc.), you do better.
In Doctor Who, success isn't black and
white. It's also a matter of how much you
succeed by. If you barely make it, the degree of
success is "yes, but...". Yes, you hit, but you
didn't do any damage and now you've gotten
the monster's attention. A solid success is just a
yes. A really good success is a "yes, and..."
where you not only did what you set out to do,
you also accomplished something better. It goes
the other way, too. To barely fail might be a "no,
but..." where you didn't do what you wanted,
but you kinda did something helpful. A solid no
is just a no. A spectacular fail is a "no, and..."
where you fail big time with consequences. No,
you fail, and your sonic screwdriver shorts out
and you can't use it again until you have time to
repair it. Whoops!
In Wushu, the player makes bold
declarations about the character's intentions,
with and statement, and bullet points. For
instance, "I want to kick the bad guy, knocking
him backward and through the window, where
he hits flagpoles and cornices on the way down,
tearing through the awning that could have
broken his fall, and landing on top of his own
car." The way it works in Wushu is you get a die
experienced roleplayers http://shop.cubicle7store.com/
8 Free,
and
Creative
Commons
licenced
at
http://danielbayn.com/wushu/

The Tao of Rules Hacking

for each statement, and the more successes you for every increment of 6. The problem with this
roll the more you actually achieve. For this is that there's no downside, no degrees of "no,
rules hack, it would be a series of "yes, and" but" or "no, and". It's just fail, succeed, or
successes. You can also spend Hero points, one succeed better. Bleh.
per additional "yes, and". So, if you got a
We could go with individual die results,
success and 3 additional "yes, and" levels, you rather than adding; count the 6's and ignore all
would 1. kick the bad guy 2. knocking him other dice. The more 6's you roll the better the
back 3. through the window 4. where he hits success. That still doesn't address the failure. We
flagpoles and cornices on
could make 1's failures;
the way down. You would
have 1's and 6's cancel
Table 1
not have him 5. tearing
each other. If it zeroes
Successes
Result
through the awning that
out, if you have more
6
"Yes,
and..."
x5
could have broken his fall
1's, now you have a
6. and landing on top of
degree of success, if
5
"Yes, and..." x4
his own car.
you have more 6's you
4
"Yes, and..." x3
have a degree of
3
"Yes, and..." x2
Putting It Together
failure. I have two
thoughts on this. First,
2
"Yes, and..."
There are a lot of
old school World of
different ways I could go
1
Yes
Darkness10 did this
here. What I want is
0
"No, but..."
except with d10's, and
simple: simple, simple,
they did away with 1's
-1
No
simple. I don't want players
canceling
successes
to have to spent a lot of
-2
"No, and..."
because it was a pain in
time adding up die rolls.
-3
"No, and... x2
the ass. Second, it kind
At the same time, I want
of feels like I'm
-4
"No, and... x3
nuance, degrees of success
reinventing Fate, and
so players can be
-5
"No, and... x4
the success ladder. Yes,
descriptive
in
the
-6
"No,
and...
x5
I had that in mind
characters' actions. No,
when I looked at
I'm not asking for much at
9
Doctor Who, but I think DW streamlines it
all.
Rules-as-written Risus has the player elegantly. Simpler; I want it simpler.
Now I'm thinking of the Ubiquity11
roll a bunch of dice and add them together.
Hopefully, the total beats a target number. If I system, where you roll any kind of dice and
stick with that, I need to create a base target count only the even results as successed. For
number. I want someone with a 1 to be able example, if you roll 3,6,3,5,1, and 4, that's 2
succeed on at least a basic level, so the target successes (the 6 and the 4). You don't need Fate
number has to be 6 or less. Say 6, to make it dice with pluses and minuses, you don't even
easy. We could keep the Savage Worlds 10 The original system, not the revised or rebooted one.
paradigm, and have "yes, and" levels of success
http://www.white-wolf.com/
9 Yes, I am.

11 The rules set behind the Hollow Earth Expedition RPG

http://www.exilegames.com/

The Tao of Rules Hacking

need d6's, you can use any dice. Pair off evens scale and allow successes to stack. So if you
and odds and eliminate them, so you end up want to do cascading "yes, and" successes you
with nothing, all evens,
can. This is especially
Table
2
or all odds.
effective when you're
A single success
looking at combat
Successes
Result
or a single failure does
damage. 1 success is
All
even
"Yes,
and..."
the job. More of each
1 point of damage. 6
Most
even
Yes
gives you add-on effect.
successes is 6 points
A wash compromises
of damage. Going
Wash
"No, but"...
with a "no, but", which
back to my earlier
Most
odd
No
seems appropriate for a
example of the Orc
All odd
"No, and..."
wash; you don't win,
(1) and the Boss
but it's not a total loss.
Wizard (6) having
See Table 1.
the same target number, 1 success will kill the
The only logic problem I have here is orc but barely nick the boss, 6 successes will
that degree of failure is tied to skill level. kill the wizard (unless he has villain points and
Someone with a 1 can't screw up spectacularly, other tricks up his sleeve, hoo-HAH!).
but someone with a 6 can. That doesn't feel
However, failure is limited to a single
right. Sure, we could try to justify it by saying "no, and". That favors the players, and I like
bigger numbers mean bigger risks, but fie on that. The GM can make the "and" part as bad as
that. Since characters with higher scores get he or she needs it to be.
fewer Hero points, their ability to mitigate
failure is decreased as well. We have a "broken" What Do We Have Now?
system here. Back to the drawing board. The
I'm thinking about the takeaway from
obvious solution is to cap it. I'm now seeing this rules hacking, and the next steps. Before I
something like what's on Table 2.
present it to any players I'll have to clean up my
Hey, that's simple! Cuts to the heart of verbiage a little bit, and if I wanted to publish it
the matter. Yes, it takes away stacked success I'd have to do some playtesting to work out any
and failures, but that's not necessarily bad. "Yes, kinks I didn't foresee when cobbling it together.
and" just does all of the narrative stuff you The real question is, what do I have here? I
asked for without itemizing each additional showed my work every step of the way. I
effect, and I can live with that. Now I have a started with Risus and Fate and grabbed ideas
new problem; what real advantage do I have for from other games, smashed them together in
having a 6 rating in a clich versus having a 4? I ways that I, at least, find logical. Obviously, it's
don't want to crunch probabilities here, I want derivative. But it is so far distant from the
to know from my gut, from a cursory glance. original sources, so much of a mashup, that it
Someone with a 1 rolls one even, it's "all even" counts as original?
and a "yes, and" and that's pretty cool, but if I
My personal ethics say that if I
roll all 6 dice and get six evens, where's the published this system I would at the very least
extra OOMPH! in my action for that?
need to acknowledge the influence of those
Let's keep the simple all/most/wash

other games12. But would I owe anyone

royalties for swiping their ideas and assimilating
them? No. Copyright law says that an idea can't
be copyrighted, only the expression of the idea.
As long as I'm not swiping entire paragraphs
verbatim from other games, and putting things
into my own words, I'm free and clear. That's
how retro-clone games exist. This system
borrows ideas, and combines them in different
ways. I just need to change the jargon that I use
-- something other than "aspects" or "clichs",
for instance -- and I'm good. It's an idea that I
find neat, and terrifying, at the same time.
Again, my ethics lean toward credit where it's
due, but reality is, I can't afford to give
everyone a cut if I did in fact decide to publish.
This mashup is a manifesto. Nearly
every game system is a manifesto, a reaction to
something else, a declaration of an ideal.
Original Dungeons & Dragons13 said "hey, look,
single-unit wargames are possible!" 3rd edition
D&D, with the Open Game License, was saying
something. 4th edition D&D certainly was a
manifesto in reaction to the Open Game
License and the popularity of massive
multiplayer games. Savage Worlds was about
cheap and easy. Fate was about story over
tactics. When you hack rules, you're writing
your own manifesto. You're saying, "This is
what I like". You're saying, "this style of play
should be emphasized". Your interpretations of
what various games are saying may vary from
mine, but conscious choices when into the
design of every system, trying to solve a
particular problem, push a style of play, model
some sort of fictional tropes.
If this system, then, isn't a Risus/Fate
hack any longer, then it needs a name. I'm going
to call it ROLPUNK-X. It's the embodiment of
12 Hence the footnotes.
13 Seriously, do I need a footnote to explain this?

The Tao of Rules Hacking

the ROLPUNK Manifesto -- play the way that

works best for you. What works best for me is
this mishmash of existing ideas. I'm not calling
it the ROLPUNK System, because according to
the very spirit of ROLPUNK, there can't be
such a thing. So I'm calling it ROLPUNK-X
because, well, putting an X in there sounds
cool, and the X can also stand for 10, as in
2010, the year I made it. I thought about calling
it ROLPUNK Prime, but that sounded a bit
snotty, and implied that other ROLPUNK
systems would be derivative of it. No, as my
tastes and my needs evolve, I may build a
system out of different parts and call it
ROLPUNK Blue, or ROLPUNK Elephant, or
whatever, and it may bear no resemblance
whatsoever to this system. You can follow the
ideas and the process I've used in this series to
build your own ROLPUNK system, taking your
favorite game and hanging various bits on it to
build what you need, or what you like.
Because what matters, in the end, is that
it works for you and that you're having fun. If
you're not having fun, you've discovered the
only possible way to do it wrong.

The Tao of Rules Hacking

Appendix: Explaining Fate Aspects

The primary problem I have with Fatebased games is explaining the concept of
aspects to gamers from a more "traditional"
background. John Wick goes into this issue a bit
when explaining aspects in own Fate hack,
Houses of the Blooded14. When people are used to
clearly-defined skills, and you're allowed to
make up your own, the clever players will make
broad, open-ended aspects that can be used for
a lot of things. I'm perfectly okay with that. It's
the players that are used to having "pick lists"
that I'm concerned about. I've seen peoples'
eyes glaze over because there's not some finite,
neatly ordered list of options. They can't make
the intuitive leap from "these are the things
you're allowed to do" to "you can do anything
you can describe". I tend to focus them toward
archetypes, templates, and classes. If you can't
grok aspects right away, and you think of your
character as a thief, just write down "thief" for
now.
What I really want to share with them,
though, is the true power of aspects. That, to
me, is the abstractness of them. They way I try
to explain it is that it's not about the concrete
description of what the character can do, it's
the narrative power of what they're doing.
Frodo, in Lord of the Rings15, isn't a "thief" as
some game systems have tried to describe him.
The aspect wouldn't be "thief". It would be
"He Must Destroy the Ring". The things that
happen don't happen because he's a thief. He
doesn't get away with the stuff he does because
he's particularly stealthy, or any sort of a
fighter. It's because He Must Destroy The Ring.
He's got to evade the orcs, because if he gets
14 For sale at http://housesoftheblooded.net
15 Again, honestly, do we need to go all crazy with the
footnotes here?

captured, killed, or eaten by orcs (not

necessarily in that order) then he can't make it
to Mordor. It's his fate, pun intended. So
anything he does that could be argued to
further that narrative agenda, he's going to get
a bonus on his roll.
Invoke, tag, and compel, the uses of an
aspect, are harder. Okay, invoke is easy; you're
using the aspect for a bonus. The gamemaster
rules whether it's appropriate to the situation
or not, and generally if a player can make a
good argument, no matter how spurious, I'll
allow it. Invoke is Frodo running from the orcs,
getting a bonus to not be caught.Yeah, it's really
broad, and can be a lot more useful than an
aspect like "thief". That alone should make it
appealing.
Tag is tougher. How can someone else
use your aspect against you? Make the player
figure that out. In Frodo's case, other people
can sense the Ring. They can tag the ring to give
them a mechanical advantage to find him,
assuming they have the proper magical
methodology or the types of senses. They get
bonus dice to feel the presence of the ring by
tagging the aspect. A tag could also be used to
make Frodo tempted to use the Ring. There
would be bonus dice against him, when he's
resisting the use. I struggle with finding ways to
Tag an aspect like "thief". I'm sure it can be
done, but it doesn't suggest anything unique to
the character and story being told. As a
gamemaster, that makes it problematic; it's
almost an advantage, in the traditional sense, to
have an aspect that's difficult to Tag.
Compel is the hardest of all for those
"traditional" players, in my experience,
because it's entirely narrative. There are no
mechanics involved, no dice, no bonuses. It's all

story. When Galadriel, or any other character,

offers to take the burden of Ring off of Frodo's
hands, and Frodo's player thinks that's a good
idea, the player running Sam, or Gandalf, could
Compel Frodo's "He Must Destroy the Ring"
aspect to make him not do that. When
Compelled, you have to act in accordance with
the aspect. Narratively, this is again so much
better than an aspect like "thief". What can I
compel a thief to do, steal? Follow the code of
the thieves' guild? Look for a trap when he
really doesn't want to? It can be done, you can
compel that sort of aspect, but in the big,
narrative scope of things it's not as appealing.
An important part of explaining
aspects, and in having the players put some
serious thought into selecting them for their
characters, is making sure the players
understand that they're helping to create the
story. It's background, it's plot hook, it's
aspirations. The players get to define what they
want to get out of the game, how they'd like
their characters to develop, even in some ways

The Tao of Rules Hacking

to define how the world works. As a

gamemaster, conversely, you have a
responsibility to use those aspects. If the player
made it, you have to find ways to use it. If you
can't think of ways to use it, you need to work
with them to find an aspect you're both happy
with.
Legal Crap

This document is copyright 2011 Berin

Kinsman. It's distributed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND
License. Just because I'm giving it away doesn't
mean I'm giving it away. Permission is granted to
distribute it, for free, via any means. However,
if you want to re-purpose it or use any part for
commercial means, you need to contact me for
permission. I'm pretty easy to work with. You
can find me by going to my website,
http://BerinKinsman.com.