Friday, August 14, 2009

Rules for that ol' Kirk charm

And now, an excerpt from Emmet F. Milestone's "Kirk on Karit 2" from Different Worlds #4.

FALLING IN LOVE
When a personality character meets a strange personality character of the opposite sex for the first time, a Romance Roll must be made for each of them. Romance Rolls are made in accordance with the following procedure:

1. Romance Rolls are made in order of the character's Charismas, with rolls for the highest characters being made first.

2. The players rolls 4d6 and adds his/her character's Luck modifier. If the sum obtained is less than the Charisma of the character of the opposite sex, the first character has fallen in love. Note that Kirk has no luck in love, so his Luck modifier is never added in a Romance Roll.

3. A character will not fall in love with more than one character of the opposite sex during the course of a single adventure.

4. If, during the course of a single adventure, a character of one sex has already fallen in love, the game-master rolls 1d6. A score of three or more indicates that no more characters of that sex will fall in love during the scenario, except as the result of a successful Pass.

MAKING A PASS
When one character is in love with another character, the first character will try to make a Pass at the beloved character as soon as a convenient opportunity arises. Passes are made in accordance with the following procedure:

1. The player announces that his/her character is making a Pass at the beloved and rolls 1d6. The player then adds character's Charisma and Luck modifiers to his/her die score.

2. The player controlling the beloved character rolls 1d6 and adds the character's Mentality and Luck modifiers to his/her score.

3. If the number obtained for the beloved character in step 2 is less than the number obtained for the Passing character in step 1, the Pass is successful and the beloved character falls in love with the Passing character.

4. Note again that Kirk's never lucky in love, and can't add his Luck modifier to these scores either.

5. Passes can be made by characters who are not in love in order to achieve their own ends.
That last line amuses me to no end.

These rules were written for Heritage Models' proto-rpg/minis game Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier but the work needed to apply these rules to D&D etc. is pretty minimal. Ignore Luck, change the Mentality bonus to Int or Wis and Bob's your father's brother. Some groups might wish to adapt the straight rules to less hetero-normative play.

12 comments:

  1. What is this thing called "love"?

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  2. Finally my old-school game can have the first inter-species human/gelatinous cube kiss!

    Thanks Jeff!

    Rich

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  3. Pat PAyne12:11 PM

    My god... that is the zenith of roll-play over role-play. Whoever thought those rules were a good idea ought to be smacked upside the head.

    *facepalm*...

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  4. off topic, but what a great cover!

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  5. I love that the rules repeatedly remind you that Kirk is unlucky in love. XD It's such an understatement...

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  6. So that's how it works!

    I wish someone had told me this when I was in high school. Perhaps I would have been able to make more successful Passes than I did.

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  7. Eh... I think this is a situation where I much prefer roll playing to role playing.

    In the game, I might be trying to seduce the beautiful elven princess, but in real life, I am telling my 300 pound male DM how much I will rock his world in the sack.

    Some things are just better glossed over with a die roll.

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  8. Heh. This always seems to turn up in relation to original-series star trek. A mechanic with similar intentions showed up in the microlite20 game Where No Man Has Gone Before: http://69.51.142.222/trek/, which is intentionally designed to recreate all the campy glory of those days

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  9. Holy carp! I have the original and have been wanting a Microlite version since I found it! Thanks a bunch for that link!

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  10. Hey, no problem! I love that little game. I fully intend to use it to run a game set in the setting of this webcomic: http://intragalacticcomic.com/

    (I haven't seen much original series Trek, and the webcomic is silly anyway...)

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  11. Thanks for the heads up Jeff, I can't believe I couldn't find such a recent post of yours.

    Really stoked to have these for the Planet Algol game, one of the PCs is a real ladies man...but what happens to our Lothario when he Falls In Love?!?! ..dun..dun..dun!!!

    I was using the rules from the Ready Ref's sheets, but these are much simpler, plus I love that "making a pass" is a game term in these rules!

    @Pat Payne: Oh come on now, this is just some good fun!

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  12. pettypi1:18 PM

    I've been looking for something like this. But what happens next? What are the benefits/pitfalls to a character in love?

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