Bay 12 Games Forum

Taken from the Introduction:

Forum RPG Lite was inspired by a forum game called “The Invasion” on the Bay12 Games Forum.  Certain elements were also inspired by War Hammer 40K and Fallout 3.  This set of rules takes place in a futuristic setting with exotic weapons and technologies.  It aims to be simple and quick to maintain and provide updates to forum games with. 

It isn’t finished yet.  However, it has enough features to be light weight and still work.  Some improvements for the future include: experience (which right now needs to be awarded arbitrarily by the Game Master), unconsciousness and disabling/disarming targets/enemies (again this has to be done by the GM right now), a system for honour or reputation, and quests.  Any of these items are subject to be summarily removed, however, for a deeper gameplay experience; some of these elements may be needed.  Weapons, armour, and items may be added, balanced, and removed. 

FRPGL is meant to be customizable.  If you want to tweak something to suit your scenario, feel free.  You can convert items to work in a fantasy setting, a modern setting, or farther in the future.  You can convert the rules, skill, anything to better suit your needs.  FRPGL provides a good structure to build from.

As I said earlier, it is meant to be modified.  But because I don't want somebody to rip off all of my hard work I included this at the end of the introduction.  And I added a README file to the .zip containing the rules:

However, there is one caveat if you want to make mods for FRPGL and distribute those mods.  You cannot distribute them marked or implied as being an official branch of FRPGL.  You must mark all mods as being mods.  You should also include who the author is, a description of the mod, and credit to FPRGL for the framework.  That’s all.  We just don’t want anyone confusing/misleading people, or stealing our work. You wouldn’t want anyone to do that to something you’ve devoted hours of work and frustration to, would you?

You are free to copy and redistribute the files within this .zip file, however, you cannot sell them.
You can create and sell mods to the files, but you must distribute the originals for free.  You must also give credit for the originals to the creator of the originals.
Author/Creator: Stephan Soucy
Released: July 9, 2010
Version: 0.1
Items Released:
-FRPGLite Rules
-FRPGLite Charts

In other words:
This is the liscence for all of my work.


In the future I intend to add more features and mechanics to the game to make it more well-rounded.  I also want to keep it small and easy to use.  Currently all you really need to play is a copy of the rules and charts, some paper, a pen or pencil, and at least one 6-sided die.  I intend to keep it that way (easy to use that is).  I will discuss planned features later.

Currently the mechanics allow for you to steal, sneak, barter, charm, be lucky, hack, repair, heal, pick locks, take damage, and kill.  I like to think that these are the core of any RPG or dungeon crawl.  The charts also outline some basic items, armour, and weaponry.  Of course as I stated earlier, it is meant to be modified, things can be taken out or put in. 

Basically Forum RPG Lite is a basic framework of rules for creating Forum RPGs.


You see, for a while I have been meaning to practice coding in Python.  I just needed motivation.  FRPGL had been in the works ever since I first laid eyes on "The Invasion" and thought "Gee, wouldn't it be nice to run a forum game?  Can't seem to find any rules though."  I set out to create my own damn rules.  Soon afterward I thought of releasing the rules.  I looked over my notes (which I understood perfectly) and thought that if someone else were to read them, they might have a hard time understanding the rules.

So I decided to create a little Python program designed to help someone through the process of using all of the different rules in FRPGL.  I called this program FRPG Helper.  I made all kinds of sub-programs that the main program would call to do the dirty-work.  I have created a basic helper for each possible thing you could do under the current rules.

The main structure of a Helper goes like this:
-There are certain things I must know, tell me please.
-Do some math and/or find which conditions are met.
-Get a random number from Random.org or create a pseudo-random number to represent a dice roll.
-Tell you the outcome.
-Return to the main menu.

For example this is the Heal Helper.
#Heal Helper
while Mainloop == 0 and ActionHelper == 6:
print "===================== Heal  Helper ====================="
print''
I = input("Please input your Intelligence Skill Level: ")
Roll = execfile("RNG.py")
print''
if Roll < I: #Roll lost
print "You failed to heal yourself any noticable amount."
break
TryAgain = input("Would you like to try again? Y/N [1/2]\n> ")
if TryAgain == 1:
print ""
print "Please roll the die."
print ""
Roll = execfile("RNG.py")
print''
if Roll < I: #Roll lost
print "You failed to heal yourself at all."
break
if Roll >= I: #Roll won
print "You healed yourself partially!"
break
if TryAgain == 2:
break
if Roll >= I: #Roll won
print "You healed yourself fully!"
break
back = raw_input ("Go back? ")
print ""
Roll = 0
Mainloop = 1
ActionHelper = 0
#end
I have debugged extensively and it should work for anyone running Python 2.6.2.  Python 3.0 hates print and input so I will convert to 3.0 someday, just not today.

I have also created something to help with creating and using Characters.  It is cleverly called "Character Creator.py".  It lets you create a character with all of the skills and attributes from the vanilla rules.  It automatically saves them.  And the program also lets you load characters to view their stats.  (Thing is it looks rather messy because I used pickle and dictionaries.  Everything has a little 'u' in front of it because it's stored as Unicode strings, not regular strings.)  The program even lets you delete characters.  I had a hell of a time wrestling with the code to get it to work, but it should also work just fine in Python 2.6.2.

All of the code is free to everyone to modify as they see fit, but it follows the same rules for distribution and credit as the FRPGL rules and charts.