[download] SQIRPS

Hey there, today I present a project that’s way out of my regular scope. It’s not related to illustration or printing, but a minimalistic Pen and Paper system to play via an instant messenger.

Often there is not enough time to meet and plan a nice PnP round. So here are the Super Quick Instant Role Play Sessions, the alternative to play on the phone during work, on the toilet, in the bus and so on.

The rules are very simple:

1. The GM sets the scenario and the characters of the players.
2. The story is beeing told by the GM until the first action of the players is required.
3. The players state their planned actions
4. if necessary the players have to roll dice to decide the win or fail of their planned actions
5. The GM tells the story further, until the next action is required
6. After about 10 actions of the players, the session ends (can be sooner).

• If dice need to be rolled, it will always be two D6, which are summed. There are four outcomes: Great Success, Success, Failure, Great Failure and 5 Difficulties: Very easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard.

• The difficulty is determined by the characters class, story, experience, type and so on. Since the players didn’t design their own characters and some of the information needed was not told by the GM in the story so far, the GM might have to improvise a bit for the difficulty.

	Very Easy	Easy	Medium	Hard	Very Hard
Great Failure	—	—	2 – 4	2 – 6	2 – 7
Failure	2 – 3	2 – 4	5 – 6	7 – 9	8 – 10
Success	4 – 6	5 – 8	7 – 9	10 – 12	11 – 12
Great Success	7 – 12	9 – 12	10 – 12	—	—

This mode of playing is more narrative than a regular PnP round, as players cannot create their own characters and react more to the story, than making their own decisions and planning the next moves. But it’s a nice way to spend some time.

This system is probably suitable to be used on the worlds, classes, characters and so on of existing PnP systems, but was tested in a world made specifically for SQIRPS, that only exists in my head so far and will need a long time to be finally finished.

One idea of SQIRPS is, to make it more absurd and silly than a usual round of PnP and try new things, stoywise.

I played some test rounds with two friends to evaluate the systems (thank you Karo and Nikki), but I am happy about your feedback for future versions of SQIRPS (via contact).

A German version of the rules can be downloaded here. They have a tiny bit more information on them, then this page.