To Nina Nadu and to my children, Olivia and Henry, you all are my everything
Lovingly made with LaTeX.
Two Bit RPG is a micro role-playing game where all actions are accomplished through two dice. As an aside to storytellers, not every action requires a roll. For example, you don’t need to roll to see if an unobstructed door might be opened.
Players pretty much have free reign on how you develop your character. All they need is a personal story, preferrably a short one. The catch is that this story must fit within the designs of the storyteller. Therefore, the storyteller might make adjustments to the charcater’s personal story.
Players take turns by raising their hands and announce what they’re doing when called upon. If there is a need for a roll, the storyteller sets the difficuilty and the player rolls. Success is determined by rolling a value greater than or equal to that value.
Whether they do or do not succeed, the storyteller decides how the action plays out, keeping it appropriate for the group of players.
For example, Suzy wants to make a break for it from Bigfoot through a banana peel field before Bigfoot catches her and makes her eat his liver and onion dinner. The storyteller gives this a difficuly of 10. She then rolls her dice and, if she gets a 10, 11, or 12, she will succeed.
Not every player must participate in every action. Instead, some players may choose to sit idle and observe the role-playing.
Because it’s not always apparent what value to set the difficulty, this section lays out a guide on how to assign difficulty. The values are based on the probability distribution of rolling two six-sided dice.
| Value(s) | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| 2 | Easy Peasy |
| 3 - 7 | Average |
| 8 & 9 | Above Average |
| 10 & 11 | Cutting An Onion While Not Crying |
| 12 | Surviving Eating Blowfish and Chips |
These rules need flexibility for dealing with large groups of players. To this end, for fairness, the storyteller should prioritize players that have not participated much.
One aspect that is necessary for Two Bit RPG are almanacs. Almanacs are a collection of facts and figures about your world. They are all the details a player and storyteller alike would need to play the games. They contain information on the people, places, and things of the environment and game world.
There are three different approaches for creating an almanac. First, the storyteller does it all. Second, the players and storyteller work in concert to develop one suitable for their play. Lastly, one developed by a third-party could be employed. Fortunately, no choice is wrong unless it is wrong for your group!
Before going into the “gory” details of the license, it’s worth menitioning my reasoning behind licensing as I have. This isn’t something patently new and are simple rules really meant as guides. I want to proliferate these to the world in a free fashion, but not restrict the form and usage.
As such, I place these rules in the public domain in the hopes that everyone treats the micro-RPG rules as such and, given the opportunity, expand upon them.
Please, enjoy this and the other great RPGs that are out there!