Wizard Student Loans is an experimental GM-facing ruleset.
Everyone is a wizard.
Work with each player to develop a few key details about their PC. Ask...
- What are X spells you learned in Wizard College? How do they work?
- What are X weird little items you keep in your bottomless bag of holding?
Replace X with whatever number you think is appropriate. A solo PC might start with 3 spells and 3 items; a group of four PCs might start with 1 spell and 1 item each.
The game is a conversation.
- Describe the situation.
- Ask, “What do you do?”
- Describe what happens.
- Repeat.
Only the GM rolls dice.
Whenever you are uncertain about what happens, roll a d6; the higher the result, the better the outcome for the PCs.
If the result seems unlikely, roll again and take the new result if it seems more likely. You may not roll a third time.
Typically, all you need to know is that a 1-3 is bad and a 4-6 is good, but you might break it down further:
- Very bad
- Bad
- Mostly bad
- Mostly good
- Good
- Very good
There is no combat system.
In most dungeon games, players have roughly four means of dealing with enemies:
- Violence (Physical Force)
- Trickery (Physical Craft)
- Persuasion (Rhetorical Force)
- Deception (Rhetorical Craft)
But in this game, PCs are squishy wizards. Tell the players: “In a head-on fight, you are certain to lose.” Players must instead rely on trickery, persuasion, and deception.
Hopefully this should feel fairly intuitive to players and no one will miss the wargamey, mathematical combat of other games.