Roll Some Dice

My research into Meso-american cultures, particularly Aztec and Mayan civilizations, lead me to a game called Patolli. In this game, you try to move your game pieces around an X-shaped playing area in hopes of winning the opponents items that he bet at the beginning of the game. Players would have five kidney beans marked with a single white dot on one side of each bean. These beans would be tossed, and the white dots counted, to determine how many spaces their game pieces were moved. Before each game, each player would typically bet six items. This is the basis for the core system of S&S:

Roll 5d2 (0 and 1), each 1 is a success. Total number of successes plus your attribute score must be equal to or greater than 6.

Not a lot of people carry around d2s all the time. Sure, you could use coins, but there are a host of other things you could try too. If you have d6’s, you could count 1, 2, and 3 as 0, and 4, 5, and 6 as 1. Or, you could use kidney beans, with a white dot painted on one side, as they did in Patolli. You could use glass or plastic stones, or even bottle caps. It’s your game, play how you want.

Now, when you’re creating your character, 10 points are to be used to pay for your 5 attribute scores. Each score ranges from 0 to 4. Starting at 0, if you wish to increase it to 1, it costs 1 point. Each point higher costs twice as much as the previous number, with a maximum attribute of 4 costing 8 points. With the 10 points, I could create a character with scores of 3, 2, 2, 1, 1. The math being 4 + 2 +2 +1 + 1. If you didn’t notice you don’t have to pay for each step up. You don’t have to pay for a score of 1, then 2, then 3. Just pay for the 3 and you’re done. If, during the course of the game, you find or are allowed an item that increases your attribute scores, even if temporary, it cannot improve it beyond a score of 4.

If you want something more to play with, the five ability scores are: Agility, Brawn, Faith, Ingenuity, and Leadership. More about these will be discussed in a future post. Go ahead and chuck some dice, play around with this system. Let me know what you find and how it plays!
Game on!