Minimus: The One Page Roleplaying Game
Posted January 3rd, 2008 by Howard Tayler
Ken Burnside of Ad Astra Games emailed me yesterday to show me this creation of his. It is brilliant in its brevity. It is a table-top RPG whose rule set fits entirely on one page — and that includes a sample character sheet that will fit on an index card (pictured to the right - click to enlarge.)
Here’s a snippet, the first two paragraphs on creating your character:
Write down five things about the character you want to play. Pass the paper to the person on your left; that person takes your five things and makes 7 skills out of it.
Pass the character sheet one more place to the left. Everyone takes a look at the five things defined, the seven skills, and defines two positive special abilities, which are adjectives that end in exclamation points, like Tough!, Smart!, Fast!, Keen Eyed! or Detective!
One really cool thing I noticed with Minimus: there does not appear to be a way to min/max, nerf, power-game, or otherwise “break” the rules without the help of all the other players, including the GM.
I haven’t tried playing with this system yet, (but I’ve read the entire core rulebook three times) so I can’t attest to its actual playability, but I think that if your gaming group really gets into the role-playing, and if your GM is a decent storyteller, this system will reward that amply.
The PDF is freely available here from Ad Astra Games. They ask only that you donate $2.00 if you like it.
Ad Astra Games is the same group that brought us the Honor Harrington “Saganami Island Tactical Simulator” board game, whose rule set still rattles my simple mind. Seeing both Minimus and Saganami from the same game designers leads me to wonder whether, at some point in the recent past, Ken Burnside and his team ran out of disk space and were forced to make their next offering a masterpiece of concision.
If you play table-top RPGs, I think you owe it to yourself to read through these rules and ponder their implications.
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January 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 am
“If you play table-top RPGs, I think you owe it to yourself to read through these rules and ponder their implications.”
I don’t play table-top RPGs, but one of the reasons is that they seem to have tremendous rulebooks and “extra” materials that spans tomes, and I imagine that to be effective (as in, don’t constantly need to be asking the group what does and what it means for the exercise, and also fail to die at least once in a while), you must have a decent command of at least 10% of the material.
But a one-page rule set brings down the cost of entry quite a bit.
This particular set looks a bit like a very fleshed out version of the theater game, “story-to-death” although I imagine there are quite a few parallels between RPGs, Theater, and the SCA.
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Actually, it has a very common min/max problem: separate initial skills/stat buy and advancement. It’s cheaper long-term to start out specialized than a jack of all trades.
For example, a character starting with five skills at 1 and two skills at 4 has 39 bennies worth of skills, where another with two skills at 1 and five skills at 2 has 31 bennies worth of skills. Nearly a full 3 session head start!
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Oops! Made a mistake, should be one 4, one 3, five ones. Worked off the sample character, didn’t notice he wasn’t a starting character.
So that’s 35 vs 31, only a bit over 1 session. Still an edge, but not quite as gross as my initial calculations showed.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I’ve just recently started playing D&D, and yes, there’s definitely a time where you need to have everything explained, and you have to get used to adding stuff up in your head fairly quickly, and you feel like you’re slowing everyone down when you have to stop to look up what that spell does every time.
This system looks pretty neat, and I can imagine some pretty interesting stories coming from everyone writing down things about their character, because it starts everyone off with background and goals, rather than a bunch of numbers and maybe if you’re lucky a vaguely defined personality.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Just downloaded this. Paid five bucks for it. This system will be perfect for running at a birthday party, as an introduction to role-playing for people who don’t want to sit down and learn a more advanced system.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Saganami, eh? The price tag kinda scared me off. How does it compare against Star Fleet Battles? [/me has an old Rated Ace pin around here somwhere…]
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I started to comment here, then decided it had got too long. My full comments on Minimus are at http://fob.po8.org/node/415. In brief, it looks like a fun thing to try, could use a bit of work, and presents a nice challenge to RPG designers.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:30 am
This game did sound pretty cool so I went over and read it. I described it to my family (role-players, all) and my youngest daughter said, “It sounds like the speed-dating of role-playing games.” Ha!
January 4th, 2008 at 2:39 am
Long-service gamer here (35 years old as of 12/31/07; been gaming
for 28 of those… :P ).
Definitely appears role-playing-oriented, tho’ I foresee much arguing
over what constitutes “common sense”, and what the other people
involved in your character’s creation were thinking when they
defined one’s skills and specials.
Puts me in mind of SJG’s _One-Page Bulge_ (the Ardennes ‘44
offensive, with rules covering one 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper), tho’,
oddly, _OPB_ was more detailed….
Now I need to unearth what I came up with for a _Car Wars_-based
RPG; I think the mechanics there ran to one page….
January 4th, 2008 at 2:45 am
As for _Saganami Island Tactical Simulator_:
1) Unless you have a degree in advanced mathematics, forget it.
2) Expect to spend a lot of time reassembling your game after
every time Jabba The Gamer brushes against the table. (And I
thought playing _Car Wars_ with a cold was bad — darned “arena
hurricanes”…. :) )
Final rating: “Run Away!” :)
January 4th, 2008 at 3:14 am
csadn - have you tried Saganami 2nd edition? Much streamlining went into it.
See:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/196937
and
http://www.adastragames.com/downloads/Advertising/SITS2e-2Page-demo.pdf
for an overview of the differences.
Long story made short - we paid too much attention to David’s numbers in SITS 1.0, and did so at the expense of the game itself.
There IS still math involved, but it’s all addition and subtraction. No more explicitly segmented movement or thrust charts.
You do still have to think in 3-D, but that is part of the appeal.
We regularly play battles in about an hour to an hour and a half, at pretty close to real time here in playtest.
We also use magnetic adapters to use miniatures on the map, and are trying to get the guy who makes them to increase production so we can sell them. :)
January 5th, 2008 at 7:15 am
This is a great lil game, very narrativist….
If you don’t recognize that term, and you’re a gamer-geek (like yours truly) you *miiiiight* wanna hop over to http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17828.0 and read up on some of the theory behind the different types of RPGs.
And yes, there’re different types other than ’sci-fi’, ‘fantasy’, and the like. And yes, it can make a big difference to how you enjoy your gaming time.
Then again, it may not. *grin* Your mileage may vary. This are the intarweb, after all.
-John
January 6th, 2008 at 2:31 am
[from “AdAstra”:]
>csadn - have you tried Saganami 2nd edition? Much streamlining went into it.
In truth, I have not, I do not believe — the review on BGG does not
match the mechanics I saw (I wasn’t playing at the time; the game I’d
been in broke early — my fault >:) ).
However, I also have not actually *seen* a copy of 2nd ed. around
here (Portland-area, OR) — gaming in these parts runs to “here’s a
deck of cards I spent enough on to buy a new car”. :P So I know not
if I’ll ever actually have a chance to see it in action.
And do you have any advice for dealing with the problem of Gamers
For Whom The Song “Fat-Bottomed Girls” Might Well Have Been
Written? :)
January 6th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
csadn:
Matt Picio lives in one of the Portland suburbs and is one of the playtesters for 2nd edition. Dane Jensen is also in the area.
When I assemble box miniatures for game play at conventions, I do the following:
1) I reinforce the interior of the box with corrugated cardboard, to help make it a bit more crush proof.
2) I put a pair of styrofoam endcaps into the box.
3) I put a fishing weight into the void. This counterwieghts the box nicely.
And, well, when Jabba-the-gamer barges through the table, it’s pretty easy to pick things up and set them aright again. At most they’re jostled by a hex.
Same thing happens in Warhammer and WarMachine games…or any game where the pieces weigh less than a quarter pound.
With magnetic flight adapters, the pieces are a bit fiddlier to use (about on a par with most minis games with flight stands), but the pewter snobs can get their metal fix. :)
January 7th, 2008 at 1:35 am
[from “AdAstra”:]
> Matt Picio lives in one of the Portland suburbs and is one of the playtesters for 2nd edition. Dane Jensen is also in the area.
Huh — odd that I’ve never seen them at OryCon (or, at least, if they
were there, their sign-up sheet was buried…).
Just wandered by your website, and couldn’t find a listing for forth-
coming demos. Any chance of kicking me in the direction of one or
the other (or both) of them? (E-mail provided on request. :) )
January 7th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Please email me your contact information, and I’ll forward it on to Matt and Dane.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Right. Umm — where?
(Details, details…. :) )
January 9th, 2008 at 9:51 am
It’s in the footer of the Minimus pdf. :) You know, that little RPG that this thread is about? :) (design (at) adastragames (dot) com)
January 10th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
My Minimus Review can be found at:
http://nealhere.com/attic/MinimusReview.html