Sunday, February 24, 2019

Dirt Simple Slashers

Very simple d6 roleplaying game based on mass-murdering slashers from the movies. Loosely based on the Cabin in the Woods mythos.

This game may feature any number of victims as playable characters, and one player to play as the DM or Slasher. Every player rolls a 1d6 to see what role they pick, lower rolls being better. If you lack a player, slide everyone down to fill the empty space.

These are the roles;
  1. The Virgin
  2. The False Suspect (The Gentleman)
  3. The Scholar
  4. The Athlete
  5. The Fool
  6. The Whore
Each roll can be played by any gender, but the virgin and the whore are almost always women. The 2nd roll “The False Suspect” is totally optional. Once the rolls are determined, the killer must roll a 1d6+1 to see who he targets first. The killer always targets the person closest to the roll going downwards; so if they roll a 7, then they go after the Whore, or the Fool if the Whore is not in play. The reason for the 1d6+1 is because the killer never targets the virgin first, who has the best chance of survival. Every time a character is killed, everyone moves down a space on the d6 roll, this way the killer will slowly pick off victims one by one until the virgin is usually the last, or the survivors manage to escape. With only 5 characters, The Whore actually has a chance of escaping.

Every “round”, the killer will chase the target. The target may react by using the environment to stave off the killer; hiding in a closet, building a barricade, arming themselves with a weapon, etc. If the killer rolls their number or under, their defense wasn't enough and they die. The killer dictates how they die, and usually leaves behind the corpse in an obvious place so the other characters can find it. If the character is the virgin, who should usually die last, the Killer may just toy with her instead; such as giving her a scar, or dropping her into a pile of corpses and leaving her for dead even though she isn't, and so on. This goes with the special victory condition of the killer with the last survivor being the virgin, just horribly scarred for life.

If the character acted out their role and used their personal skills they can lower their rank by one; for example the athlete can use a weapon or their strength to try and attack the killer, or to run away over an obstacle. The scholar can use their intelligence to make a plan, or the fool can do something unexpected and stupid, like playing dead, which somehow works if the killer fails the roll. The False Suspect gets to lower his rank against the killer if he acts in defense of another character, or does something incriminating that makes the other characters doubt him. While the players OOC know he is just a player, in the game he is the “most likely” person to be the killer and may be accused or taken away by police.

The only exception to the above is the virgin, who can lower her rank (and therefore always evade the slasher) if she calls for help. Once all the other characters are dead, then the virgin is finally vulnerable. If the character cannot think of any kind of defense, the killer just kills them. If the killer's roll is over the characters rank, then the killer is evaded temporarily and it will select a new victim with a 1d6 roll, going down the list of whoever is left.

Finally; the game can also end early based on the fiction. For example, if the killer is buried in a rockslide that they couldn't lift out of even with their superhuman strength, or if they were blown apart by a bomb, then the slasher is dead and the survivors win. Some slashers may be supernatural even moreso, such as a ghost or malevolent AI, in which case defeating them requires more fitting means; trapping the ghost in a puzzle box, hacking the AI with a virus, etc. Regardless, the Killer wins the game if all characters die, or if the Virgin gets away but was scarred and suffered horribly through the events of the game.

No comments:

Post a Comment