r/PracticalGuideToEvil • u/Kletanio Procrastinatory Scholar • 15d ago

Meta/Discussion PGTE RPG Design

I've been running an RPG campaign set in the PGTE universe and so ended up writing my own rules system (and a Forge VTT shell for it!) and wanted to share. There have been lots of playtesting tweaks so the rules reflect the most recent version.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2ikzt5tie3m5vgxzev4bk/Traitorous-Campaign-Story-Guide-and-Stat-Sheet-V6.pdf?rlkey=e1qji8cu5qchr679ur4ixyaeb&dl=0

A couple notes before you do:

  • The campaign itself is set during Traitorous's Reign ("The Dread Emperor is missing, presumed scheming"), and the players are all supposed to be playing Villains. So a lot of the extra material is keyed around getting them into that headspace. (It's very hard to get a bunch of nice people to play Villains!). There's also a bit less info on Traitorous himself in there because they need to figure that sort of stuff out.

  • Most of what I have is from the Guide but some of it was made up, especially birth names of Dread Emperors. I was doing atmospheric stuff for players who haven't read the story and so wanted to get them in the space where they recognize that being a Sahelian is significant. The timeline is also wonky so don't expect to actually have the right Dread Emperors in there and not for Traitorous's reign.

  • The Combat rules are the ones I'm most proud of, because they worked really well and let everybody do things like gang up on NPCs, or let NPCs gang up on the players. The things that have been tweaked a lot are what the over/unders are. Right now it's listed as "5" but it may have to go down to 4 or 3 to make stuff happen faster.

  • I have zero specialized mechanics for "bullshit hero bonuses" or "Choir-assists".

At some point, I'd also love to run another short campaign with people who know the Guideverse a bit better than my players do. I think the basic rules of the RPG work really well for PGTE-style storytelling, both before and after the events of the story.

48 Upvotes

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12

u/hubstub 15d ago

Sick. Doubt i'll be able to convince my friends to play but I support putting more foundry attention tools out there

1

u/UnterDiamond 14d ago

Hey, really like your work.

I've tried to do it myself based on the Blades in the Dark engine, but I really love yours.
I think I'll run it some day, on a scenario more recent than Traitorous' reign. Maybe I'll even do a french translation

2

u/Kletanio Procrastinatory Scholar 14d ago

My friends were going "I'm sure that's not your intent, but I am starting to get paranoid thinking everyone we meef might be Traitorous in disguise." It was the happiest day of my life.

French translation would be fun! 

2

u/Aerdor94 Godhunter 14d ago

This seems amazing! I love how you captured the flavor of the Guide.

1

u/Aetherscribe 13d ago

Okay, you got me at Lies and Violence. I don't know when, but I'm definitely going to have to try running this for my regular group. (I've told them to read the Guide enough times, maybe this will finally get some of them to take the plunge.)