The idea is really nice here, including the unexpected realities of life is a great idea, but I do feel like it would be a bit difficult to implement in-game. Maybe for a long campaign, but for your average adventure, I don't think you'd end up actually getting enough downtime to make it reasonable. Fun idea regardless though!
Play ruleset
Life Happens – A Life Event Subsystem for Draw Steel's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Usability | #18 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Theme | #26 | 3.200 | 3.200 |
| Overall | #28 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
| Enjoyment | #35 | 3.100 | 3.100 |
| Creativity | #46 | 3.100 | 3.100 |
Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
I always like taking elements from narrative-focused games (iike PbtA games) and pushing them into more crunchy systems. I will echo the desire for more complex stuff here, but I dig the baseline and I like the events and the breadth of topics and questions they cover. "Are they a good boy?" made me chuckle.
Submitted
Eon DragonThank you! :) I was going back and forth on more mechanical benefits during the design process, and in the end I decided against it. I do think it's the right decision too, as the lack of mechanical benefits frees up the interpretative and random elements of this more. You can't really be mad that you rolled trouble with authorities rather than romantic partner if it's just a flavor thing, whereas with mechanical benefits you can be. That said, I am planning to make a set of titles related to these life events after the jam, so anyone who wants more mechanical benefits can use both. Doesn't help me in the jam of course but might be nice :D
I do realize that asking if your pet is a good boy is a bit silly. Because obviously they are.
Psiocratic Press is two people so all our comments will distinguish between Jaccob, William, or Both's(as Psiocratic Press) feedback.
There are some cool ideas in here, but we feel like kind of basic. Would love to see a more expanded version of this with more events to avoid too many duplicate rolls. -Psiocratic Press
I would prefer the system to be more mechanical. I also prefer player driven story/downtime than random tables. -William
I like it. Simple to execute, with a system that becomes easy to use once done a few times. For my own sake, I'd appreciate a rough guide of how many times a life event can be advanced through. I.e, how many times can I roll a negative for Romantic Partner, before it ends in a nil result. Understand that the size of the doc prevented this, but if you expanded this concept work (dare I say with flow charts) ;ater on, I'd love to see more of it.
Thanks so much! Yeah the light weight of the system was definitely part of the design.
I sort of hesitate to comment on that, because of the interpretative nature of the rules. I could have said "three negative rolls and it's over", but then every set of player and director is going to interpret the result poorly. You know, someone might think a negative result is having an argument with your partner about which way the toilet paper goes, whereas someone else might interpret it as them having an affair. One of these is obviously much more severe than the other, so it feels weird to say that three of one or the other will end it. In the latter case, maybe one negative roll is enough to end it. That's sort of the fun of collaborative and interpretative storytelling! :)
These kinds of rules are not particularly common in DS, but you can find them in other, more rules light systems (a lot of OSR style games have these kinds of rules, for instance), so I wanted to introduce some of those styles of play into DS. :)
This is great! It’s lightweight, but evocative and useful. I can see myself adopting this.
My favorites are death of an acquaintance, and new community. Those are ripe for adventure ideas!
Only feedback, “How can a player advance an ongoing Life Event?” I would add a chart here with the rolls and the outcomes. Just faster to reference.
Really cool, well done!
Submitted
Herald of the Time EnderThanks so much! Let me know how it goes if you do decide to use them! :)
I see your point about the ongoing events. That first paragraph could just be a chart, with the second paragraph remaining as it is. I hadn't thought about that, mostly because the initial version was all just text, that I then decided to split up with subheading questions. I'm thinking about adding stuff after the jam is over so I'll look into this then as well! :)
Will do! I've also realized that as a bonus, the mechanics are simple enough that (intentionally or not) you've made a solid system-agnostic event generator for any game that has some sort of downtime involved in it. I'll spread this around with friends who run other games too and letcha know if I hear any interesting stories.
A simple yet useful tool to add depth to the players' characters. I always loved rolling for character backstory, piecing together what happened to them with each new roll, and I this submission provides that for characters in an ongoing campaign. I like how each result is followed up by questions to make you think about how to incorporate the result into a narrative. Good stuff. I can already see an otherwise good and by-the-book character rolling 5 every time and getting into trouble with authorities, and it's never their fault! That would impact how I roleplay that character for sure :D
My only note—a suggestion, really—is that getting multiple times a New Pet result would quickly get tiresome. I think a better option is to rewrite it into a New Friend option that mentions how this new friend can also be an animal. And getting a new friend as a result of rolling on this table would provide the Director with an excellent opportunity to use this new NPC for their nefarious purposes! Betrayal, kidnapping, leverage! Or just a natural source for providing new campaign-related information.
Thanks for the extensive feedback, really glad you like the rules! Very kind of you to say :)
The idea with the ongoing events is that it's one ongoing situation that doesn't necessarily end each time. So with the New Pet option, the idea is that the situation with your pet advances in some way. Maybe they get housetrained, maybe they make a new pet friend at the dog park, if things advance poorly maybe they get ill. It doesn't mean that you get a new pet every time.
As for new friend, I was thinking about this as one of the options, but I thought about how we behave in real life; usually, making a new friend isn't something that will take up an extended amount of your free time for an entire month, in the way that a new romantic partner or getting a new pet might. The New Community event is sort of supposed to be these rules version of that. Getting one new friend might not take up the entire month, but getting a bunch of new friends might! :D
That's the idea, anyway. Though if that isn't clear to readers, perhaps these rules require some clarification.
I'm a big fan of anything that encourages players to think about their characters as people and not just a series of abilities and weapons. This feels like the kind of thing I would use between campaigns as a way to progress the PCs story between the end of one adventure and the call to the next.
Submitted
The Baby
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