Princess Bride RPG Actual Play Report
Actual Play Report – The Princess Bride Roleplaying Game by Steffan O’Sullivan +the Materials I Used + A Postscript
Why this, dear readers? I bought the game as research, and ran it as research, but it’s fun research, so I hope you enjoy reading this report.
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A few weeks ago, I agreed to run a one-shot for some friends, their daughter and her friend, and a couple other people. I thought, “Great! Now I have a reason to track down and buy a copy of Steffan O’Sullivan’s Princess Bride RPG,” which I did.
I read it, and I loved it, but I got very busy at work, so a couple of nights before the game was to start, I looked at it again, and I realized that though to experienced gamers, the Princess Bride RPG is rules-light, the rules and character creation were simply too complex for a one-shot with new players, at least the way I wanted to run it.
The first thing I cut was skills, replacing them with upbringing and professions, which I collectively referred to as backgrounds. If your background matched a situation, you received a +2 bonus to your roll. Jack and Jen’s of All Trades received a constant +1, but no one created one of those. (By the way, I’ve done something similar with D&D too).
I also cut out gifts and inconveniences and replaced them with options to customize attributes and backgrounds.
In addition, I wanted combat to be fast, over in a roll most of the time, so I cut out wounds and damage. If you win, you get to decide what happens to the loser, keeping in mind that in this setting, killing others outright is rare.
At the start of the game, I gave the players a character generation sheet and a rules sheet. I’ll provide cleaned up versions of both at the end of this report.
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The Set-Up: The PCs used to be crew members on the pirate ship Revenge, but her captain, the Dread Pirate Roberts retired, and so the PCs were let go with a generous severance package, but that was a month ago. Now they are wasting away in Smuggler’s Cove.
I started the game by asking the PCs how they had blown their severance package. These were their answers and their characters:
Zen played Sir Arthur, a minor noble, the least favorite son of his family, even though he was an only child. By profession, a cartographer. Zen explained that Sir Arthur had been forced to walk the plank, so he never received a severance package. Zen never explained why Arthur had to walk the plank, but if we play again, I am definitely exploring that.
PJ played Aman, an Egyptian mercenary. He had drawn a really cool suit of armor for Aman, so he explained that he had used his money to buy that armor.
Jay played Twigs, a Swedish arborist and plank inspector. He had invested his money in a grove of trees, so although it wasn’t “blown,” it wasn’t liquid either.
Raquel played Diego, a brute of a cook, but not too bright. Diego had lost it drinking and gambling.
Ken played Cassandra, a fortune teller. He came in late so we never got to discuss what happened to Cassandra’s money.
Dave played Larry, a Romani, bon vivant, scientist, dancer, and in retrospect, he should have been a jack-of-all-trades. His family was poor and very important to him, so he sent his parents the severance package.
Cloud played Fabian, a cowardly but good-hearted archer with a slight limp. He was also a noble like Sir Arthur, but Fabian’s family had died out or been killed. As the game went on, it became clear that he had spent his money on gifts for Amanda, the waitress at the inn they were staying at.
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I mostly used the scenario Princess Noorena’s Hats, but the ending borrows heavily from another adventure.
The PCs have been getting dirty looks from the inn’s owner, who sees that their money is running out. “Hey, ain’t you guys pirates? You know what’s next door? The Thieves’ Forest. You guys are like cousins. Tell them I sent you.”
The PCs can take a hint when it’s directly stated, so off they go. They meet Corey, the leader of the guild, who has a job they can do to prove themselves, which is to retrieve Princess Noreena’s hats.
The PCs ask almost no questions, eager as they to get adventuring. Cassandra does a reading before they go. We used a regular deck of cards, and she pulls a three of diamonds, a jack of hearts, and a ten of clubs. The spirits tell her thus:
3 of Diamonds refers to a triplet of something creative.
Jack of Hearts is a warning about vanity.
10 of Clubs means that if they start a fight at some point, it will become a brawl or a riot.
They travel a little bit across Florin to an abandoned monastery, and have to give the hats’ guards the pass phrase.
Oh shoot! They forgot to ask Corey about things like pass phrases.
Luckily, the guards drop some hints, and Twigs improvises a just-acceptable, terrible pass phrase. The guards happily leave, the hats are hidden in a cellar, and only half of the PCs put up a watch. The other half are too lazy and selfish.
One of the guards comes back and tries to steal the PCs’ wagon since he felt he wasn’t paid enough to have waited for them, and he didn’t want to deal with hats. Diego, the not-too-bright cook, happens to see the thief, yells for his friend Fabian, and everyone wakes up except Twigs.
Fabian shoots the thief, wounding him, and the rest of the PCs quickly subdue the thief, keep his armor and spear, and send him running away. Larry tells him to spread the word that the pirates are back, and that they won’t be so nice next time!
The PCs leave with the hats the next day, but there is a government check point set up to catch contraband from Guilder, such as the hats [Note, I mixed up my Florin and Guilder and so I had to change some stuff in the adventure because of that.]
Sir Arthur, as a noble and cartographer, knows of a path around the checkpoint, but they would have to travel through a noble’s lands, so Sir Arthur negotiates with the noble and ends up giving up a hat.
The PCs make it to the capital where Sir Ar
Arthur attempts to use his status to get into the royal palace with the hats. But he rolls miserably and comes to the attention of Duke Quilty, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who declares Sir Arthur persona non grata on royal grounds until he pays five years’ worth of back taxes -- 75 Florins. Sir Arthur explains that he was captured by pirates, but Duke Quilty doesn’t buy that -- where’s the proof of ransom? More likely, Sir Arthur was consorting with pirates and ignoring his responsibilities.
Sir Arthur tries to find a friend, and he does -- a friend who kindly acts as a patron for the exchange, as long as he can keep a hat. His friend also informs him that every once in a while when he’d see Sir Arthur’s parents, he noticed that they’d been burning letters. Sir Arthur realizes those were the ransom demands that Roberts kept sending to his parents!
So the PCs delivered 23/25 hats, which is pretty good.
Now they have enough money to pay their back taxes or bar bills or both.
They go back to Smuggler’s Cove.
Fabian bought a nice hat (not Princess Noorena nice, but, y’know, nice) for Amanda, the waitress. The PCs settle up with the barkeep, and Amanda tearfully tells Fabian he shouldn’t have come back. He looks shocked. Is this a break up?
No! But four shame-faced guards approach him and arrest him for theft.
The last time he was here, right after he disappeared to go to the Thieves’ Forest, a nobleman who’d been sitting next to Fabian realized that his fancy drinking goblet was missing, and he accused Fabian of theft.
Well, the pirates back their crew member, and they start a brawl with the guards, and some of the PCs, notably Aman, acquit themselves well, but the guards call for more guards (remember the 10 of clubs?), and the PCs, except Sir Arthur, who bravely run away, are subdued and thrown in jail.
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And if we play again, that’s how we begin.
A successful game since everyone had fun and we actually completed a one-shot in one evening.
I told my wife that this crew might have gotten along with Vezzini, and she suggested bringing him in. It could work. Vezzini might not be dead -- this adventure could have happened before the events of the Princess Bride, or Vezzini was only mostly dead after drinking the poisoned goblet.
I think that the guard they robbed wants revenge too.
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These rules are a greatly simplified version and slightly modded version of the rules in the Princess Bride RPG, which themselves are based on the FUDGE rpg, which you can find online for free.
Directions: You describe what your character wants to do.
The GM decides on the difficulty, depending on circumstances, equipment, preparation, and whether anyone is helping or hindering you.
Then pick an appropriate attribute – Body, Wits, or Heart – and add +2 for an appropriate background, then roll 4 “FUDGE” dice, add them up, and add that to the total. To “FUDGE” a regular six-sided die, read it like this: 1-2 = -1, 3-4 = 0, 5-6 = +1.
If your total matches or beats the difficulty the GM set, you succeed!
Otherwise, you did not succeed.
Use the following table to judge your levels of success or failure and your difficulty. The GM could say that you need a Good result to succeed, for example, or the GM could say you need a “2” to succeed. Or the GM could just ask you what your final roll is, and you could say, I got a “-3” or it was “Inconceivable!”
SCALE OF EFFECTS
SUPERB +4
GREAT +3
GOOD +2
FAIR +1
MEDIOCRE +0
POOR -1
TERRIBLE -2
INCONCEIVABLE -3
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That’s enough for simple actions, but for complex actions such as duels, whether of wits or swords, it works like this:
You take an action as normal, but you note the difference between your total roll and the GM’s difficulty. So if you rolled 3 and the difficulty was 2, the difference is +1.
You keep going until you reach +3 or -3. At that point, the winner is decided. In combat, the winner decides what to do with the loser. But this is the Princess Bride, so death is rare except for true villains.
“But Grandpa” and “Life Isn’t Fair”
The players as a group one free “But Grandpa” point which allows them as a group to decide to reroll any one set of D6 dice.
The players can choose to get more “But Grandpa” points, but if they do so, the GM gets a “Life Isn’t Fair” point which allows the GM to force a reroll of any one set of D6 dice.
These points cannot be used to offset each other.
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Character Creation
Step 1: Think of an appropriate Princess Bride type character.
Step 2: Choose Backgrounds: Upbringing and Profession.
Choose Your Upbringing: Family, town, country, etc… Consider languages, the kind of work they did, and so on.
Choose a Profession:
Agent, Brute, Fencer, Miracle Worker, Pirate, Peasant, Burglar, Forrester, Pedlar, Smuggler, Courier, Highway Robber, Con Artist, Cook, Jack or Jill of All Trades, Minister, Performer, Grave Robber, Scientist, etc…
SPECIAL RULE FOR JACK OR JILL OF ALL TRADES: You get a +1 on every roll from your backgrounds, but never +2.
Step 3: Split 5 points among your attributes. No attribute may start lower than 0 or higher than 4.
Body – Strength, agility, health, etc…This is the basic fighting stat.
Wits – Intelligence, cleverness, alertness, perceptiveness.
Heart – Courage, empathy, goodwill, and charisma.
Attribute Levels
0 pts –Mediocre
1 pt—Fair
2 pts—Good
3 pts—Great
4 pts—Superb
Step 4: Customize
You may want to get more specific with attributes. You pick a high Body because your character is an agile acrobat, but you decide that you are not that strong, so note +1 Agility, -1 Strength under Body. You may modify sub-attributes to be as low as -1 or as high as 5.
You may also want to get more specific with backgrounds. Perhaps you were born a peasant but you decide that you are literate, but, on the other hand, you are a terrible farm worker.
Note about Customization: Players wanted rules about customizing attributes. I had only included the descriptors from the book -- I didn’t intend those descriptors to be defining, just examples of what attributes covered. If I were to run this again, I would simply have six stats -- Strength and Agility, Intelligence and Perception, and Courage and Goodwill, with ten points to split between them.
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POSTSCRIPT 1: I haven’t written lately because work has been consuming so much of my brain power and time.
POSTSCRIPT 2: Running and reading Steffan O’ Sullivan’s Princess Bride RPG was a wonderful experience. I’ve been trying too hard these past few months, and I think it shows in the writing. This is not to get down on myself, but part of the revision process is to see things again from a different perspective. It helped that I was writing for an audience whom I knew and that I knew would see me in a few hours. And it helped that I was cribbing from a master.
POSTSCRIPT 3: There’s no art because the artist feels worse than I do and is busier than I am.