Journeyman: Reborn

Sat, 26 Aug 2023 18:30:00 -0400

After stewing on the previous incarnation of Journeyman, I decided to strip it down to the bone and build it back up to something I think is a light, extensible, and expressive framework that can support any number of settings and genres.

I had a few guiding principles. It needed:

A consistent way to resolve tasks when randomness is needed.

I wanted to avoid minigames and multiple, sometimes inconsistent, subsystems for different aspects of the game. “2d6, roll high” is an extremely simple concept to keep in mind for task resolution.

As little character quantification as possible.

I enjoy games that take a more literary approach to character design, and I wanted to see what players could come up with in an unbounded playing field.

No power bloat.

The protagonists in stories I enjoy rarely get tremendously more powerful as time goes on. Typically, they improve by getting new equipment or gaining allies. I wanted to have a game that explored that kind of growth without such a focus on increasing numbers on the character sheet.

No reliance on any dice beyond d6.

Admittedly, this is a purely stylistic stance. I collect all sorts of dice, and enjoy chucking them when I can, but I relish the simplicity of the d6 and wanted to hew close to the Traveller roots.

[I love you, too, d12, we all know you’re the perfect polyhedral die.]

So, I’ve released its new incarnation, and you can download it on my itch.io page

Introducing the Journeyman Engine

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 19:47:00 -0400

I’d like to introduce you to a homebrew system I’ve been working on recently. I call it the Journeyman Engine, and it ~~comprises elements~~ steals liberally from some of my favorite Odd Borg Hack games.

I was hoping to create a lightweight system that supported rich and flavorful character concepts with enough knobs, buttons, and levers that interacting with the world would be fun but not a burden.

Resolving risky actions

Any time your character is going to try to do something risky, you’ll roll two dice, applying any appropriate modifiers, and compare the total against a range of outcomes:

Roll	Outcome
6 or less	Failure (2 might be a Fumble)
7 - 9	Success at a cost
10 or more	Success (12 or more might be a Critical)

Die ranks

One die comes from your character’s Ability (Strength, Agility, Wits, Empathy) and one die comes from your character’s Skill. The dice you use depend on the rank of each:

Die	Ability	Skill
d4	Weak	Unskilled
d6	Average	Apprentice
d8	Strong	Journeyman
d10	Elite	Master

Example

With this, it’s easy to see that Magdalene, a stoic swordsman with weak Empathy (d4) and unskilled in Manipulation (d4) can only hope to succeed at a cost when trying to persuade the noble into acquiescing to her request. That is, at least, without aid from equipment or ficitonal positioning. Were she to supply the noble with enough wine or present the signet ring of the noble’s husband, she might get a +1 or +2 to her roll, opening up the possibility of an outright success.

Pushing a roll

Were she to fail, she could attempt to push the roll, giving her one final chance to succceed, at the expense of rolling her Ability die to see if it is reduced. On a 1 or 2, her Ability die would be degraded one step on the Dice Chain.

Dice chain

d10 -> d8 -> d6 -> d4 -> Broken!

Broken!

When an Ability reaches Broken, the character takes on a condition, appropriate to the Ability. Physical failures result in Damage while Mental failures result in Stress.

Journeyman-Engine on Neverending Pretending