A TTRPG that turns a fantasy novel into a character sheet (and dice)

[@mobgabriel1767]

*casually opens the illiad *

[@taejaskudva2543]

Coincidentally, the algorithm showed this to me the day after i took my kids to see a theater performance of The Hobbit, and the framing device in the play was the dwarves were the PCs of a d&d group and gandalf was the gm npc, and Bilbo joining the party was the gm trying to get their partner to join the game to take their mind off a family tragedy that has turned them into a shut in during their grief.

[@MemphiStig]

That's far better than whatever tf it was that Peter Jackson did to it!

[@SerifSansSerif]

Alice Through the Looking Glass would be utter madness..

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

The more off-the-rails the book is, the better the game plays, to be honest. I hadn't played it with The Fellowship of the Ring before recording, so I was discovering how quickly I missed the more descriptively creative writing of other books that give you more to work with. (Not that Tolkien isn't great at describing things, just his word choice is a bit vanilla.)

[@worldcolonyinitiativ]

tried a dry run with dune. First spell i landed on was unexpectedly, You'll-Attract-Purposely while the obvious love spell is there i think it would be more fun to make this an enchantment that gives someone magnet powers. two more spells from other books included Host-Neanderthals-Chagrin Fantasy-Lust-Badly which makes a much more fun love spell.

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

That's awesome! I love it when people just start testing out the spell creation system on a whim. The game's rules help guide players to more consistently useful results by calling for "verb, noun, adverb" but what you found would work great. (At least, as far as making the game fun. I feel for the apprentice who accidentally casts Fantasize Lust Badly.)

[@ConlangKrishna]

From a book about Tantric Magic: "practice path purely". The spell became a cleaning spell that tidies up a corridor, street or pathway, but it takes a lot of time and practice. In the beginning, it actually made the mess bigger. A classical topic from "a Sorcerer's Apprentice"!

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

Love it! The Sorcerer's Apprentice is exactly what the title and general vibe of this game is supposed to bring to mind.

[@johnplaysgames3120]

First of all, I love this idea and will definitely be proposing it to my group bc it seems like it would make for a fun night. Secondly, as soon as the video finished, I wanted to try out the idea for myself, so I got up and pulled a random book off the shelf (one of my mom's books that I ended up with after she passed away but have never read). It was a book called "Exploring Inner Space" and appears to be some sort of woo-woo self-help thing with a dose of hippie mysticism. My first thought was, "Yeah, I could see how that would give an apprentice wizard's magic a very particular vibe," lol. Then I flipped open to a random page, pretending I was mid-game and on a time limit to pull words, and the first spell I desperately landed on was, "Draws Everything Horizontally." And I immediately saw the power of your game's system because just those three words inspired so many ideas of what that spell might be, how it might be used in a game situation, etc. Super fun. Other spells I came up with from the book: - Retain Something Physically - Feel Position Emotionally - Offer Picture Silently - Activate Towel Fearfully From another random book from my mom's collection, "Deadly Perfume" by Gordon Thomas, I ended up with the spells: - Retain Water Majorly - Recognize Lie Briefly - Switch Moon Timelessly - Deliver Paper Probably And my favorite from that book: - Kill Thousands Sexually I feel like that last one might be the beginning of my villain arc. 🤣🤣🤣

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

I told myself, when making this video, that I would know it had succeeded if someone posted a comment exactly like this. Love the spells, and I love that it inspired you, and I really hope you're able to play it with your group! And please tell me how it goes if you do!

[@Lunam_D._Roger]

"Kill thousands sexually" Tags - Tentacle Ryona Ero-Guro Tentacle-Pentration Dismembered Snuff

[@Lunam_D._Roger]

"Kill thousands sexually" Tags - Tentacle Ryona Ero-Guro Tentacle-Pentration Dismembered Snuff

[@Lunam_D._Roger]

"Kill thousands sexually" Tags - Tentacle Ryona Ero-Guro Tentacle-Pentration Dismemberment Snuff

[@MemphiStig]

That last one seems like squad or life goals, at minimum! 😆

[@nanardeurlambda]

I have an encyclopedia of symbols. Specifically the symbolic meaning of various objects and concepts in multiple cultures. I bet it would wonders in a game like that

[@Corvus-Xoriat]

whats it called where do i get it would you like a cookie?

[@nanardeurlambda]

@@Corvus-Xoriat sorry, I'm pretty sure the book is exclusively french. "Dictionnaire des symboles" if you are still curious

[@Schattenpuma]

I think the idea of writing a spell out of symbols, not knowing what it does, then casting and trying to put pieces together with characters becoming more knowledgeable -> them becoming more powerful would be amazing, but probably hard to pull off, would have to limit the amount of symbols a ton...

[@DennisCNolasco]

I like the way you think, just subbed to your channel. I love "outside the box" designs.

[@Merrsharr]

This reminds me of the method I use to make passwords. I have to generate a LOT of passwords for work, and as xkcd points out strings of words are longer and thus harder for machines to guess, yet easier for humans to remember. Quite often I'd look at those words and think "this would make an amazing story prompt."

[@reyesraine]

Loving what you're doing with this channel, we need more short ttrpg design experiments!

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

Thanks! I also plan to expand to doing some things with D&D (and hopefully eventually make bigger games), but these little, free, experimental games are fun. Apprentice's Grimoire has been the biggest hit with my players so far.

[@reyesraine]

@ThreeBearsRPGs I enjoy the non-DnD content, though I understand DnD will easily bring in views and whatnot. Definitely going to propose Apprentice's Grimoire to my group,

[@pogeman2345]

I'd bring Sanderson books and hope that I luck into the magic systems lol

[@peachy_lili]

picked up a non-fiction book about mental health. "enrich goat typically". I got a friggin animal vitamin spell

[@xslashsdas]

There's something similar to this that I've been using to "generate" evil plots for my villains whenever I need something new. You know how people take Nostradamus' prophecies and meticulously cut and edit them to sound realistic? Take the "meticulously" part away and you've got yourself some actually insane and maybe fun inspirations for your crazy evil liches. Great video, btw. I have some friends who don't want to get into RPGs because they sound too complicated, but they're book nerds, so I'm 100% trying this with them!

[@MachewDunf]

I wish I had friends who were down for this. I'm afraid they would look at me like I was crazy if I wanted to play this with them

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

Serious question: Do you think they could be persuaded by a video/podcast episode showing how it's played, or is it just too weird for them?

[@MachewDunf]

@ThreeBearsRPGs for most of my friends, I think it would just sound too childish, even for the friends that play D&D. I think it could work with a couple of my friends though

[@ThisGreyCharm]

This is a really good and creative idea. It seems like a good time. I'll keep you in mind.

[@paysongough]

This is really cool! one part RPG, one part Mad Libs, one part Sortes Vergilianae! (The Sortes Vergilianae is a method of fortune telling in which you open to a random passage of the Aeneid by Virgil to get your answer)

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

I didn't know that about the Aeneid. That's very cool haha.

[@flaetsbnort]

Bibliomancy is a well-known method of divination in which you open a random book to a random page and read the result as your fortune. It's fancy that the Aeneid has a specific name for its version, but you can do this with any book

[@sagethemage2650]

The concept of this series is amazing! would love to see more like this!

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

I'm glad you like it! This was the last game I had fully prepared before starting to publish, so it'll be a little while before I have more like this, but I'm currently experimenting with using Wikipedia's random article search features for a game...

[@MemphiStig]

Really interesting concept you've got here. If you want unusual combo's, maybe try James Joyce or Melville (whose vocabulary alone might be quite challenging to parse/interpret). You could also forego the dice and just randomly open pages for the numbers. Depending on whatever "system" you might use to interpret them, you could add them up, maybe even look for a total closest to a pre-determined DC or whatever. Or how about this: take a blank book (notebook, etc), roll dice and record the result on a page, fill the whole book like this, then use that for your required "rolls" opening to random pages whenever needed (sure that would be a lot of work, but I'll bet some people would love it). I'll bet you could also find books full of numbers if you look a bit.

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

Actually, the game uses the words as dice! When an apprentice does something that calls for a "roll" you open to a random page and look for an adverb, or create one from a word you find. That adverb describes how the apprentice attempts the action, and the players interpret it. But there was one playtest when we wanted to generate a random number, so we decided to open to a random page and use whatever was the last digit of the page number. That only ever came up once, though, so I decided against adding random number generation to the rules.

[@toddweaver1390]

Opens “The Complete Tales of H.P. Lovecraft”: (1) Trace-Horrors-Briefly (2) Compose-Thunderstorms-Damply (3) Legion-Primordial-Cohort Edit: number 3 doesn’t necessarily follow the Verb-Noun-Adverb structure but I take it to summon some unknown army of entities

[@calebpearce8095]

If I opened the Bible, our party is unbeatable.

[@dnd_jamaica5542]

Casually opens the Hitchhikers Guide

[@alicemursteinlesbefaen666]

obsessed with this idea, havent read though the rules yet, so i dont fully know how the stats work or how many words you may use for spells, but my newbie game designer brain had the idea that maybe each player chooses lets say 8 words as their stats. they can be very wide ranging and describe various sides of the character, or they can all be quite similar, and make a character concept very focused. then, when casting a spell, to see how many words you can use in your spell, you look at your stats, and count how many of them apply to the situation. so if all your stats are words like "beastly" "prowess" "destruction" etc, you'll be able to cast longer spells if the situation calls for violence, but struggle finding even one stat to cast spells with in situations whithout a threat to destroy. similarily, a character with a wide variety of stats like "glowing" "secrets" "death" etc, will often find at least one stat to use in most scenarios, but will struggle using more than a few stats, so their spells end up only one or two words a lot of the time. I dont know if shorter spells are necessarily less powerful, but they are a lot less specific, which is a great way to cause chaos.

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

I'd be interested to know what you think of the rules! I eventually decided to make it so that the only words you record on a sheet for consistent use are spells, exactly because combining words makes for a more specific idea. Writing single words on your sheet as descriptors can run into problems where you find something like "perfect" or "invincible," which permanently turn your apprentice into a character that kind of undermines the vibe. Instead, the single words are used like dice rolls to describe how your apprentice does a specific action. Spells, on the other hand, are a verb, noun, and adverb that are cast randomly at first, causing total chaos, but then you can write them down for later use when they might actually help. And because they're like special abilities rather than words that describe your apprentice as a whole, that helps to keep them from undermining the idea of the players being novices. The most tone-undermining thing we ran into with playtesting was an apprentice who got a spell that was something like "alarm weapon perfectly," which we decided was a spell that attacked someone with a magical weapon that couldn't miss, but it made a loud bell sound when it did. That gave us an apprentice who was a master magical duelist, but it wasn't a big problem since the story we came up with didn't really have any combat, so she just used it to try to smash through obstacles, which brought back the chaos.

[@alicemursteinlesbefaen666]

@@ThreeBearsRPGs thanks for the detailed response. i love hearing about game design processes, and i will definitively read through the rules! would love to run/play this some time

[@jonathanmoore5281]

I've gotten "Anywhere Trick Depressingly". I feel like that gives a certain tone, for sure.

[@cthulhufhtagn2483]

Dang, this is actually really cool. I wanana play this now 😂 Another game you could make out of a book would be something in which the characters were some kind of archaeologists or explorers. I imagine them exploring some kind of ancient land or ruin or something like that, flipping to random pages and looking for words that pertain to their specific situation. For instance, player 1 might choose a noun - "field" or "chamber" or something - and then player 2 might choose an adjective to describe it. Player 3, in turn, might choose another adjective, or a verb that determines how it might be interacted with, or another noun to describe something within it. Gradually, as the players move through the space, they would build up an idea of what it is and how they engage with it - adventurers looking for loot and glory might form a very different story than, say, scouts in hostile territory, or archaeologists learning about the world they find themselves in. The book the group chooses (I imagine there would only be one book the players would share between them) would steer the setting as well, simply through the sheer kinds of words available within it. _Dracula,_ for instance, would form a very different story than _Discworld,_ or _Dune._

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

That's a cool idea that sounds like it's kind of mixing The Apprentice's Grimoire with a letter-writing/journaling RPG that I ran into not long ago (though I can't seem to find it again) where you play as archaeologists discovering a lost civilization and basically create a wiki about it together. I don't remember that it had many, or any, randomized prompt elements, but a book could totally do that.

[@Yakmage]

gotta do this with discworld

[@WarmongerGandhi]

I cast Millennium Hand and Shrimp

[@jonnyjessop9847]

Buggerit ​@@WarmongerGandhi

[@crapphone7744]

Okay thanks, you just tore 30 years of role-playing into ribbons with a better idea. Attributes are not numbers, in fact they're not attributes they're descriptors. I can't believe no one has said before forget about Numbers let's just describe our characters. How to work out the mechanics for this... Thank you for a genuinely fresh idea.

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

To be fair, the Fate system is the earliest example I know of that basically does "descriptive words/phrases as stats", but I do love playing around with that concept to see what else it can do. This game and my fortune cookie game are my weirdest experiments with it. I think it generally works much better for systems that aren't tactical/crunchy (though I do also love tactical/crunchy games).

[@lordender_kitty_official]

*grabs the dictionary*

[@disgruntledbob2812]

You unhinged madman That’s genius

[@TheManWithTheFlan]

Hey you ever watch the old 90s fantasy movie The Pagemaster? I feel like a game played like this would probably feel a lot like that.

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

Oh yeah, I'm a total 90s kid, so I get what you mean, and that comparison is a great honor for the game!

[@anniebot_45-73]

4:30 omg... ocean's 11 is a dnd campaign...

[@Ariamaki]

My thought about 'Strike Unexpectedness Magnificently' would be something that counteracts an ambush in a very flashy or potent way: Maybe if a previous accident let loose a 'Funky Mischievous Critter', this would be a good spell to have on hand! I definitely dig the premise a lot, and jumping to Crime and Punishment at the end really made me laugh: I am currently playing a video game in which one of the main characters is based on Rodion Raskolnikov, and in fact every other major character is also based on a prose author (like Japanese-occupation-era Korean poet Yi Sang) or literary character (like Goethe's Faust and Mephistopheles). Mapping all of them to their respective books would create a lot of very fun situations. :3

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

That's totally what it could do, and you're thinking of how it works in the exact right way: comically inappropriate in a way that just causes more problems when a spell is first cast, then it comes back to save the day when it's actually useful. It can create this great dynamic in a one-shot where everything starts out as an escalating mess, then the apprentices get to be heroes in the end. The book makes a surprisingly big difference, basically like playing a different character build, so it's fun to try different ones to see what kind of spellcaster they make. I actually picked up Demons at the end, which you can see how far I've very slowly gotten by the bookmark in it haha.

[@paulweyer4339]

Send help, tried Kafka!

[@lofi_wzrd]

Uuuh, Discworld anyone?

[@Mistwolfss]

This idea seem interesting but i got lost after like two minutes. I think it would help if you did a better jod of explaning what you were trying to say closer to the beginning. Or maybe i just missed something.

[@insertjokehere212]

The main gist is that each player brings a novel with them. When they cast a spell, they have to randomly flip through their novel and grab the first word they see. They do this a couple of times per spell. Whatever sentence or word combo they strung together is their spell. Something like "cried does called them" might make a group of targets cry inexplicably. The player can then write that down to cast it another time they want.

[@ThreeBearsRPGs]

I get that. I write these videos to try to go into broader TTRPG design concepts to cover the why and how of the game, rather than just what the game is, so that can probably make them longer and more complicated (possibly in ways they don't need to be). But the general idea is that the book each player brings to the game is their character sheet, dice, and story generator. To create story prompts, action resolutions, or spells, they flip to random pages and pick different words they find there, then all the players together interpret the results. The broad design concept is that you can make games with extremely simple rules if you make the fiction extremely limited - in this case, the game is just about playing inexperienced wizard apprentices rather than generic fantasy adventurers.

[@Mistwolfss]

@@ThreeBearsRPGs ooo, neat!