d6 degrees of success with anything

Is the badger's burrow wide enough to squeeze down? Is the giant scorpion's flesh edible? Are the bars set in a stone weak enough to chip away? Will the dead tree's branch stand up to the dwarf's weight? Does the abandoned generator have any gas left in it?

You're a GM and need to determine some aspect of your world. Roll a d6. 1 is the worst plausible outcome for the characters, 6 is the best, and everything else is shades in between.

Why do this?

• It's quicker than any other rules-based approach
  
• It's helpful if you have trouble just snap deciding the answers to questions
• It's useful when something would affect the PCs, so you would be either 'handing them a win' or 'screwing them over' by fiat
• The dice can surprise you and challenge you
• When not everything has the most likely default answer, it can make a world feel more real
• There might be a rule for this situation (or one that can be adapted), but you don't remember where it is

The "crawling down the badger burrow" example:
1 - Looks barely wide enough to get down, but narrows partway through, so characters can get stuck upside down in the middle of a twisty dirt tube
2 - Isn't wide enough to squeeze through
3 - Is wide enough to squeeze down but requires a little digging around the bends
4,5 - Is wide enough for the smaller characters, but not the largest
6 - Is just large enough for everyone to get through

The "eating the giant scorpion meat" example:
1 - Is poisonous; incautious consumers suffer a minor ongoing poison effect
2 - Is mildly toxic; characters start throwing it up shortly after getting it down
3 - Is edible but tastes really bad
4,5 - Is fine to eat
6 - Is not merely edible, but delicious and keeps well

Etcetera.

The key understanding is that you don't even have to assign numbers and degrees of success before rolling. Just mentally frame - or speak out loud - your question. Then you roll, say, a 2. All you have to do is think, what's the second-worst answer to the question?

Advanced versions:

• Rarely, you'll have a question where the range of plausible outcomes are neutral with regard to the player characters. Just orient yourself on whatever axis you can find, and roll.
• Sometimes there will clearly be more possible axes than 'good' or 'bad'. Something could pose a high or low threat but offer a high or low reward, for example. Just use several dice, associating one colour with one axis.
• With a basic intuitive understanding of dice probabilities, you can determine the answers to questions about populations, off the cuff. Say you've randomly generated a group of 21 soldiers on the road. How many are in poor morale? Could really be any number of them: 1d20. How many are currently battle-ready? Probably most but not all of them: 1d8+10. How many are carrying bows? Let's guess it's likely to be about half: 2d10.
  

Jade Perida: A 5e character made using lifepath generation

The Kickstarter campaign for my new book is three days in and has reached its funding goal. Today I'm sharing a 5e fantasy character created with the Steps to a Hero system.

The book has several ways to randomly generate character ancestries. For this one I used the balanced method, which has a small bias towards human ancestry. In today’s case, nine dice rolls gave us djinni and elf ancestry, and the story of someone's life.

Jade is not a physically brawny character, but a mental powerhouse. The uncovered story of her life is a driven and noble one. She set off at age 28 (young, for someone with elven blood) on a three-year journey.

Jade has one lifepath step from each ancestry, and another four steps that are events in her life. Jade is a bit of an outlier in that she didn't learn to use any tools over the course of her lifepath, but she ended up with plenty on her character sheet: lots of languages, skills, weapon proficiencies, starting equipment, and background features.

Steps to a Hero includes an optional rule for selecting a class based on the character's lifepath. In return for this constraint, a character can transfer a point from as many as five ability scores into one of their choice (to a cap of 19). We applied this rule and found that Jade is torn between Paladin, Wizard, and Cleric. Given her modest physical attributes and the righteous path in her background, Cleric is the obvious choice! The final step was to transfer a point from Intelligence to raise her Wisdom to 19.

You can follow along with the campaign to get more updates like this one.

Tarb, the Strife-heeled: Half minotaur, half orc, all brawn

Tarb is a Fifth Edition character built with my upcoming lifepath system.

Tarb is a distinctive fellow! Half minotaur and half orc, with the physical ability scores you would expect from those ancestries, he set off at age 18 and spent 11 years questing, standing guard, and sailing. Tarb’s lifepath is made up of three heritage steps (from his minotaur and orc ancestries) and three endeavour steps (from events in his early life).

This particular character ended up with lots of proficiencies and background features, but no tool proficiencies. A finalisation stage pruned back a few more features I rolled for him, and permits him to start with extra hit points instead. He knows two languages, and doesn’t start with much equipment. These traits are all the result of how his lifepath turned out.

By using an optional rule in Steps to a Hero, we can select a class for Tarb based on his lifepath using a points-based system. The class we end up with is Fighter! To build a powerful warrior, this rule also empowered us to transfer a point each from Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma to raise his Strength from 15 to 18.

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