HONOUR OF GRAYSKULL: A RULES-LIGHT SHE-RA-PG
SO REMEMBER I WAS TALKING ABOUT DOING A SHE-RA RULES-LIGHT HACK YESTERDAY?
YEAH, IT HAPPENED, ALTHOUGH UNFORTUNATELY I HAD TO DROP THE IDEA OF STRUCTURING THE WHOLE THING AROUND THE PHRASE “GAY DISASTER”.
MORE, IN LOWERCASE FOR EASE OF READING, BELOW THE CUT!
This hack is based on Brian Shourd’s Cape & Bureau RPG, itself a hack loosely based on John Harper’s Lasers & Feelings. Both of the above are Creative Commons.
For this game, each player will need five six-sided dice and one ten-sided die, except the GM, who may not require dice at all. I would recommend keeping them all the same colour, but that’s just because I’m neurotic and also it stops you mixing them up; any dice will do.
(If you want GM to stand for Grayskull Master it can.)
Character Creation
First, everyone will need to create characters. This is a pretty simple process, especially if you already have a rough character outline in mind - an OC you already created, for example.
Your character has four Traits: Power, Personality, Motivation and Style. Pick one word to go in each Trait.
Power: If you have mystical powers, this is probably how they manifest; if not, this represents training in something like magic, First One technology, or strategy, or just halfway decent combat skills. Choose from Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Light, Dark, Body and Mind, or come up with something else! Then specify how this manifests. (For example, Glimmer and Adora both use Light powers, but those manifest in very different ways!)
Personality: This is the overstated character type that informs your heroism. You might be Abrasive, Kind, Quirky, Noble, Reckless, Sly, Ruthless or Larger-Than-Life, or some other personality trait.
Motivation: You need to have a reason to fight - it’s unlikely that anyone is going to join the Rebellion for mozzarella sticks, put it that way. You might fight for something good, like Love, Compassion, Honour, Loyalty or Truth, or something less good like Vengeance, Glory or Greed - pick one, or make up your own.
Style: This defines your general aura and theme and may also describe your dress sense. This may have some overlap with personality, but not enough to be necessarily redundant. You might be Controlled, Elegant, Flamboyant, Practical, Rough, Scary, Traditional, Weird, or something else!
Now just note down that you have 5 Max Dice and come up with a name and description for your character, and you’re ready to go!
(A few examples: Adora is Light, Noble, Truth, Practical; Glimmer is Light, Reckless, Love, Elegant; Bow is Mind, Kind, Loyalty, Practical; Catra is Body, Abrasive, Vengeance, Rough; Shadow Weaver is Dark, Sly, Vengeance, Scary; and Entrapta is Mind, Quirky, Truth, Weird.
Playing the Game
When you take an action with interesting stakes, describe it in a big, cool way, and then grab some dice - one six-sided die for each of your Traits that is relevant to your description, plus one if the GM thinks your description is awesome enough. You can’t take more six-siders than your current Max Dice. Then add in your 10-sided Revelation Die and roll!
(Obviously, describing your action is going to take some care so as to avoid hogging the spotlight more than is strictly necessary. Don’t make every action a 900k enemies to lovers slowburn; aim for a couple of sentences, maybe a paragraph if it’s really important.)
When you roll your dice, count the number of six-siders that come up with a 5 or 6. If you don’t get any, you fail; take a Consequence (see below). If you get one, you succeed with caveats; the GM will give you some kind of complication to deal with. If you get two, that’s a solid success, and three, a critical success where you get some other cool stuff on top of the regular success.
Now look at your Revelation Die. If that matches any of your other dice, you may ask a question of the GM and get an honest answer. Note that this isn’t necessarily the same as a helpful answer; the GM will generally be more open with stuff that’s immediately actionable (”what’s the best way into the fortress”, “is the Horde commander cute”) than big story-level spoilers (”who were my real parents”).
Consequences represent injuries, debilitating effects, curses, lost equipment, mild concussions, First One viruses, and the like - anything that makes it harder to act, essentially. Each Consequence you take from failing rolls reduces your Max Dice by 1. When your Max Dice drops to 0, you’re taken out and can’t take part in the rest of the adventure; if everyone runs out of Max Dice, you’ve failed at your task! (And next week’s session is probably going to involve breaking out of a Horde prison!)
