“Minimus” The Four-Page RPG
Posted December 13th, 2008 by Howard TaylerJust over eleven months ago I blogged about Ken Burnside’s Minimus, the one-page RPG.
Ken has since made it four times longer, and he’s submitted it for consideration for an Origins Award, where it will be up against the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of the industry, D&D 4.0.
I play D&D 4.0, but I love rooting for the underdog. Besides, Minimus is such a brilliant distillation of role-playing that it should be required reading for people who play other table-top RPGs — especially game-masters.
From page three:
Minimus is a storytelling game … The focus of a storytelling game is descriptions of character actions and interpersonal relationships. The cardinal rule for running a storytelling game is this: Story logic trumps realism. If it sounds cool, say “yes”.
I remember playing “How to Host a Murder” years ago, and thinking “this is just a ‘Miss Marple’ D&D game.” Role-playing games are a form of group storytelling, and once you peel away the game mechanics you usually find yourself with a simple set of rules for storytellers.
Those rules are so simple it’s hard to charge money for them. Besides, the physics simulations inherent in the game mechanics are fun, so game designers and players alike bury themselves there.
But some of the very best moments in any role-playing session arise out of the story logic you’ll find explained in the four short pages of Minimus.
Go have a look.
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December 14th, 2008 at 3:25 am
I looked at D&D 4th. It’s more of a 400lb slug. I still can’t believe they basicly turned D&D into a really lame MMO. I mean, hell, it evn has a skillbar with cooldowns. If they’re going to create an entirely new RPG, they could at least not pretend it’s still D&D.
Here’s to hoping minimus beats D&D.
December 14th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
At this point, I feel compelled to link to Lore Sjöberg.
December 14th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Ya know? I don’t blame Daemonworks at all. I absolutely loathe the new D&D. My gaming group tried to switch over permanently after 3 weeks, and it turns out only DM liked it more then 3.5. And that’s because it was easier to run, he actually hated the rules.
I hope Minimus wins.
December 14th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
I’ll give my rooting cheer for Minimus, too. My local group, before half of us graduated and the other half moved away, ran a chop-job mod between 3e and 3.5e. It was a bit clunky, and we occasionally had to fight over glitches, but we could contrive to accomplish just about anything.
We didn’t have to worry too much about overpowering the game, our DM was /amazing/. If we had a combination that threatened to turn into a juggernaut that would smash all comers, either that combo showed up on the opposition side… or he found the chink and leveled the playing field.
December 15th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Another vote of no-confidence for 4.0 and WotC here, and most of the people I’ve talked to don’t care for it either. I had one person try to tell me that it was a good thing that D&D was more like a video game, to bring more people in to the hobby, but then I pointed out something that made his head explode:
If 4.0 is a MMORPG and provides the same interaction and level of detail, D&D 4.0 has 15 minute latencies that make online mmo’s superior in reaction time and interest. On top of that most MMORPGs have crafting systems, 4.0 dispensed with the crafting rules/skills that already existed in 3.5. With these two factors that potential ‘new audience’ would find actual computer games preferable to the tabletop.
I play both computer games and tabletop because I have different expectations from each. Computer games I expect to have a certain hack-and-slash aspect to them, though stuff like Oblivion and Fallout 3 from Bethesda have made excellent attempts to reach outside standard combat-centrist games. Computer games have a degree of rigid procedure because the GM/DM is a computer.
Tabletop I want more character interaction, more player influence over the direction of the storyline, and more freedom of creative action (Ie: doing stuff that the GM/DM didn’t think of); stuff that (as yet) computers have yet to be able to adapt to as well as a human GM/DM can.
Eventually maybe computers will be able to handle the full range of human GM/DM abilities, and a tabletop RPG that is exactly like a computer game will be great, but we’re not there yet and hamstringing tabletop games to the scope of computer-game possibilities is short-sighted at best.
My own $0.02
December 15th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Oh, forgot:
There’s also the Pathfinder project that’s picking up on the OGL status of 3.5. It’s in beta right now and you can download the beta test (sorry, I don’t have the url offhand, but a quick google should find it), but it’s supposed to be finalized in August next year.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Thanks for the warm thoughts. I have no expectations that I’ll beat out D&D 4.0; what I hope to do is make the finalist ballot (which is public) and have a lot of people check out the game on the “Wait, 4 page RPG going up against D&D?!? I gotta see this…” metric. And maybe get people to decide “You know, for three bucks, what’ve I got to lose?”
Since Howard linked, I’ve had a bunch of downloads and two donations. Much appreciated.
As to the merits of D&D 4.0 – as a game designer, I like the design and development of D&D 4.0. It’s a much better focused version of “Classic Dungeon Crawl” tropes; everyone has a unique role to fill on the basic premise of kill monsters on the square grid. It’s easier to run, faster to play, and everyone gets to play tactical team play decision making. It’s less dependent upon “What gear have I got on page 28 of my character sheet.”
In a nutshell, it does everything Minimus doesn’t. On the other hand, Minimus does everything D&D doesn’t – they hit different flavors of gamer.
I’m not sure it’s the right game for this point in the market. WoTC and Hasbro made a gamble with this game, and it’s going to take a year or more to play out.
D&D 3.5 had a buyer base of about 2.5 million customers. MMOs have an order of magnitude larger than that. D&D 4.0 is an attempt to grab a larger market, hopefully without alienating the existing customer base.
At this point, anecdotal evidence indicates that a lot of players bought D&D 4.0, a fair number switched, and about 30-40% of people who tried it, switched back. No figures are coming in yet on whether or not it’s pulling new players in.
This has all the statistical hardness of tapioca puddling, so apply salt to taste.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I’m going to have to counterpoint AdAstra on the merits of 4.0. Just to clarify, yes I have played it and I own a copy of the PHB, yes on occasion I do like dungeon crawls, and my copy of Warhammer Quest had the scuff marks of many a session to prove it. That said:
4.0 may or may not be less dependent on gear, but it replaces that dependency on gear with a dependency on feats over 28 pages of the character sheet. A dependency on gear is very much laid at the feet of the GM that does or doesn’t hand it out. Consider that magical gear and feats or other special abilities often replicate the same effects, all that’s been done is to shift the responsibility for handing out those abilities from the GM to the rulebook.
“Everyone gets to play…team play decision making.” No rulebook will ever make this true, dungeon-hack or otherwise. Player cooperation and tactical planning is entirely dependent on the players and the GM involved regardless of ruleset or genre. In the case of 4.0 this is especially tricky as the classes are so specialized that one’s decisions and reactions to many circumstances are generated at character creation out of a lack of flexibility.
“Faster to play”.. not in my experience. I meant it literally when I said it was a video game with 15 minute latencies.
It’s easier to run as there are fewer decisions to be made by players and DMs alike. This limits replay value, and limits what you can do with the system without adding copious house rules.
“It’s a much better focused version of “Classic Dungeon Crawl” tropes;…” more focused than 3.5 sure, but if this is a good quality for the longevity of the game I’ll point you to Hasbro’s “Hero Quest”, TSR’s “Dragon Strike”, and Game’s Workshop’s Warhammer Quest”. Even consider the evolution of D&D from it’s first edition (before people talked about “N’th Edition”) that was completely dungeon-crawl based through a host of variants, many that never carried the label of “Nth’ Edition”, each one diverging farther and farther from dungeon crawls to explore worlds at large in more detail, being driven by player demand for more story-based systems. Classic Dungeon Crawl hasn’t historically displayed market longevity in the tabletop realm.
D&D will continue to survive, it is after all the only RPG to have name recognition amongst people who have never played any tabletop games. That said, it would seem that Hasbro/WotC is reinventing the wheel, and history of gaming shows us that as the shiny-new wears off 4.0 there’s going to be a lot of movement back towards a ruleset that does not favor one specific style.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Please note – my comment can be read that D&D 4th is a well designed thing, but not the right thing for the current state of the market. It’s a gamble, and we won’t find out until after GenCon 2009 (if then) if the gamble paid off.
From my own neck of the woods, it’s better for me if D&D 4th stops the d20 daisycutter effect, where it’s nearly impossible to get shelf space for non D&D styled games.
From the perspective of how D&D was designed, they did a good job of making sure that at no point during character creation or growth that your concept was going to be either hide bound by a class/race decision, or that you were going to be overwhelmed with options.
Every time you level, you have anywhere from 1 to 3 things to ‘pick off a list’, and you can argue that it’s fantasy shopping for guys.
In terms of game play, you make decisions, you throw dice, you tell GM what the damage was. Much faster than 3.5 in that regard.
All that said, I think that they’ve made a very well designed game that has only a limited amount of play in the current market. It’s a gamble to see if they can get WoW players to D&D; the rumour that this was going to be the ’seeding wave’ towards a WoTC branded MMO took a knock when the annual WoTC Christmas Layoffs gutted A) most of their online dev team and B) most of their remaining D&D 3.5 team.
I don’t know if Hasbro will do to WoTC what Topps did to WizKids…but I have to admit it’s in the realm of possibility.
December 15th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
So, now that we’ve hashed over why we wonder why D&D 4th was made….
Anyone got questions on Minimus?
December 16th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Not a question — a prospective Issue: Letting the other players
have access to one’s character, in my experience, is a short course
to disaster; half the players will be trying to shaft the other half,
while a different half will be making deals to create uber-characters
for each other (think Bob, Dave, and Brian from _Knights of the
Dinner Table_…). And Player Pools aren’t sufficiently deep to avoid
having Prats involved…. :P
D&D4.0: I can’t have my Half-Orc Assassin? As they used to say on
_Emergency!_, for entirely different reasons: “KMA 365″….
December 16th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
csadn:
Shafting someone else during character creation kind of goes against the rule “Pick things you’d have fun watching that person play”.
I keep hearing about how people expect collaborative character creation will turn into Uber Munchkin Characters…and yet, I never see it in play, either as a player in a Minimus game, or a GM.
I have seen a Minimus game where the GM didn’t explain the game theme well enough to give players a guideline for what was appropriate, and what was meant to be a high power fantasy game turned into a three session game where players ended up being minor godlings. Two characters got revised a bit when the GM looked at what everyone had made, to bring them UP to the power level of “I shattered the moon when I had a bad day.”
However, that didn’t unbalance the game. Remember how experience points get awarded. It’s how well you describe your failures (and play your flaws, if you take one) that gives you character advancement.
My suspicion is that the Uber Munchkin Character comes from “physics simulation” style rules with laundry lists of defined abilities, where there is a competition (open or hidden) to find teh bestest rulez ’sploits evah. Who cares if the game is fun if you can prove that you’ve done a better job of warping the rules than your buddy.
Think carefully about what the implications of “score XP for describing failures” does to Rules Exploit Mania, particularly in a game where you can make up for not having a skill at all by weaving details into your description, and where equipment is just a way to store details for when you need them in a scene.
Now, try to build me a rules-breaking munchkin character in Minimus…and ask yourself if said character would be any fun to play?
December 17th, 2008 at 2:29 am
AdAstra: A few points…
I’ve had the misfortune of knowing gamers whose idea of “fun”
was “let’s see how badly we can *&^%$#@! the other guy and not
have him chair-shot us”. This is part of why I’m no longer in Omaha.
(The less said about the character who could take out skyscrapers
with his finger, the better….)
I’ve also run into players for whom the Power Trip *is* the reason
for the game (see previous remark about Omaha).
As mentioned: _Minimus_ does seem to require a GM who Knows
What He’s Doing; and you provide an example of what happens
when the GM misses a detail or two along the way.
Physics-sim games, I’ve noticed, do tend to have the same flaw:
Numbers work more-or-less-linearally (?) — there is rarely a “law
of diminishing returns”. I’m sure there’s exceptions; I just can’t
recall any right now.
I suspect it’s just my typically-rotten luck that I look at Igor from
_Dork Tower_, or The Untouchable Trio from _KoDT_, and rather
than laughing find myself saying “Been there, done that”. :P
And I’d try creating a Munchkin for _Minimus_, but the very thought
of doing so so depresses and sickens me, I’d very much prefer to
not do so.
Must go read comic now — getting depressed. :)
December 17th, 2008 at 4:18 am
csadn, AdAstra: I’d love to see a successful munchkin in Minimus.
December 17th, 2008 at 8:36 am
I’ve had the misfortune of playing with a few groups like csadn has, brief experiences all. I’m sure that it’s possible to munchkin Minimus if only because munchkins are like fools
“Nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious.”
It’s definitely not a system I’d play with a group I had just met.
$0.02.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Again, you’re focusing on character creation. Not the actual reward mechanism in play. If you can munchkin describing your failures for XPs, that means you’ve got two other people who will auto-nominate you (and you’ll auto nominate and second to them). That implies a bit more socialization than the typical onanistic ritual of finding the tastiest cracks in the rules to force open.
At which point, the GM should adjust the game to make you guys happy. Seriously – it’s about having fun at the table.
The mathematically pure munchkin build for allocating character points is “4 ranks in that skill, 3 ranks in some other skill, and 1 rank on the other 5 skills.”
I can get an easy +3 or +4 on the die roll just by incorporating details put into the scene by other players…at which point, I have to, oh, pay attention to what they’re yammering on about, rather than it there and stack dice until it’s my turn to unleash the Double Kukri Swirling Vivisection of Pure Awesome.
Oh, and task sequencing means paying attention to what other people are doing as well. Hmm.
You’d almost think these rules encouraged listening and collaborating. :)
I routinely run Minimus at conventions with people who’ve never played it before, and often never played with each other before.
I don’t always succeed – there was a run where I got two kids who played D&D 3.5 and ONLY that, who just wanted to kick down doors, kill the trolls and take their stuff.
However, most of the games I run at conventions (which tend to be silly in theme because I don’t have as much time to prepare, or iron out a theme from the player’s requests) are successful. People roleplay – sometimes they do improv acting – but they do roleplay; the rules are so blindingly simple that there’s no real challenge in trying to crock them, and the best way to rack up the bonuses is incorporating details and describing your failures to get bennies – and describing them in ways that entertain everyone else.
The people who tend to Not Get It are the ones looking for the MinMaxer’s paradise, who feel the game is “too stupid” and leave.
Games are reward mechanisms. You reward the kinds of behaviors you want to see; there’s very little in Minimus that rewards Munchkin play.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Let’s see about making a Power Trip Minimus Character
You’d want to start with a goal. “Become Khan of All of Europe.” might be a good goal. “Become reknowned as the mightiest user of the Spiked Chain in all of Hyborindelesteros” might be another.
Clearly, this goal means you’ll be facing a few setbacks on the way – for how can you prove that you are the mightiest Spiked Chain user in Hyborindelesteros if you just thresh everything before you, without a challenge?
Besides, while you’re succeeding all the time, the other players in the party are failing, and they’re advancing faster than you…
The trick to making Munchkin resistant games is to remember that games are reward mechanisms, and you get the kind of behavior your game rewards.
Remember that while you’re screwing that person over on their skill selection, they’re probably giving you powers like God of Rap! and Flatulence! (You can accomplish anything out of combat you can present in Rap format, and your farts are legendary…)
So everyone gets hosed during character generation, and everyone starts out ‘balanced’. (Well, equally unbalanced…)
What you’re describing is a problem in social contract, not game rules.
Minimus won’t make playing with dickheads any pleasanter than D&D will.
It will make it OBVIOUS that you’re playing with dickheads earlier in the process, and you can adjust appropriately, including saying “Sorry, got more fun things to do, like sorting my toenail clippings collection by taste.”
December 17th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Minimus won’t make playing with dickheads any pleasanter than D&D will.
It will make it OBVIOUS that you’re playing with dickheads earlier in the process…
This argues well for using Minimus as an RPG-group vetting process. New group? Throw down a session of Minimus before settling into something with big, expensive books.
December 17th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Yep. AdAstra just explained why I’d love to see a successful munchkin in Minimus. Note the word successful.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Note: I meant successful as in “able to become very powerful, very quickly”, not as in “keeps succeeding”. Although I would actually like to see both, for different reasons. In the latter case, it’s just funny to see a munchkin get out-levelled by everyone else.
I think in Minimus teh bestest rulez ’sploit evah is to entertain the other players so much they keep nominating you for bennies. Although playing a series of expendable characters who die nobly in quick succession before introducing your ultimate (pun intended) character could work depending on the GM.
On another note, the special powers God of Rap! and Flatulence! could actually be quite powerful. I imagine God of Rap! being a bit like the Dashing Swordsman prestige class in OOTS, except using a song per battle instead of a quip per action*, and in a setting that allows outright super powers, Flatulence! could be used for flight and (provided you have an ignition source) flame-throwing. Even in a more mundane setting, it could be used to clear a room, right?
*If you can’t rap well, remember player/character separation. If you can rap well, but not quite as well as a God of Rap, remember player/character separation and Tenacious D’s “Tribute”.
December 17th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
i think that is the fail of d&d 4.0. for a kick in the door, kill the monster, lewt the shiny bits i would rather play a simpler game, munchkin, minimus, combat hex, or even a home brew, a simple clean fun game. if i want to get deep into a world or a character, then a large base of well fleshed out rules are desired, a la add and its countless supplements.
mind you i am not saying that your game cannot go deep, simply that i think it would shine in the short and simple games.
December 18th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Saying “God of Rap and Flatulence” implies there’s a difference
between the two…. >;)
December 18th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Flatulence doesn’t rhyme. Rap, if you’ve ever really LISTENED to it, rhymes pretty damn impressively.
I’m not a fan of Rap, but I certainly respect it.
On-topic — There were a couple of neat discussions of Minimus at Dragon’s Keep yesterday. Funny thing, that. I blog about something, and then people want to talk to me about it in person.
The most fascinating suggestion that came up was “release Minimus as a D&D expansion to help with character story generation and party balance.”
December 18th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
The most fascinating suggestion that came up was “release Minimus as a D&D expansion to help with character story generation and party balance.”
Oddly enough, there’s a fairly long thread on the Wizards forum that does just that…
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1036571
I had to bark a bit to get the thread originator to link back to the game, I’ve gotten three sales since Howard blogged on it. We’ll see what else shows up.
Minimus as currently written works wonderfully for five to seven session story arcs. It can run longer than that (I’ve done so), but I find that stories with definite beginnings, middles and ends are more enjoyable to play out than the interminable campaign of wandering l00tage.
December 19th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
adastra question: at one point the rules state that for every use of a special ability beyond the first three times you pay one beany. after you state that you may make one special ability “at will” meaning you don’t have to pay to use it, does this mean that if i know i will use an ability 20 times i can ‘at will’ it and only pay three beanies as opposed to 17? can you have multiple ‘at will’ powers?
not having played it though i would still like to offer my opinions on the game. as far as munchkining your ruleset i think you just changed the skill set for munchkins from the lawyer/mathmatition to the class clown/popular kid. as far as making it more evident you are playing with jerks? i don’t know. if they give you a powerful character with ‘good’ special abilities they where ether being nice or screwing over your character by making them less ‘funny’. by making you a god of rap and lord of flatulence, they may be jerks giving you trash abilities or some one giving you a multi use talent and access to the most absurd unlimited fart jokes ‘(You can accomplish anything out of combat you can present in Rap format, and your farts are legendary…)’ these sound like awesome abilities in your game. in the end you don’t know if they are jerks until you start playing. mind you i do like your game, it has more great features than pages, though you’ll likely not see my money until i can get a group together to play it.
December 19th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Red:
That is the purpose of the “At Will” rule – if you spend 3 bennies at the start of the session, that ability can be used any number of times. As most characters won’t have more than A) 10 bennies saved up or B) 3 abilities and C) bennies have much more interesting uses, I haven’t found a problem with people trying to frontload multiple powers. Three bennies for an at-will special ability is a high (but not crippling) price to pay.
It’s not impossible to munchkin a character. It’s just difficult…and it’s painfully obvious to do, and requires cooperation from at least two other players…who presumably have their own desires.