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House Rules

House rules are strongly encouraged in Adventure. Here are some ideas you may want to adapt to your game.

Pets

For added fun, each character can have a pet that accompanies them on their adventures and helps them along the way. This can add a fun dimension to the game.

Pets can be small and sensible (a cat, dog, or woodland creature) or large and absurd (a dinosaur, dragon, or elephant).

A player’s pet can be used to get them out of a tough situation, as a weapon in battle, or just for added flavor and interest in role playing. Pets do not get their own turn during encounters.

Tinkering

If you have an adventurer who loves to build things and has a big imagination, tinkering is an awesome special skill.

A tinkerer can build small creations from bits of scrap metal and wood. Here’s how it works.

  • Tinkered items can be robotic toys, weapons, tools, and more.
  • Tinkered items are small and fragile, and stop working after a few turns.
  • Only one tinkered item can exist at a time.
  • The parts from a tinkered item can be reclaimed to build another (either after it break, or when the adventurer decides they’d like to build something else).

The Game Master may choose to have the adventurer first acquire a tinker kit: gears, bits of scrap metal, and some small tools from an NPC shopkeeper in the game.

Building a Tinkered Item

Tinkered items use a die roll to determine if they work, and how long they last for.

  1. The adventurer announces what they’re going to try to build, then rolls one die to determine if it works.
  2. The standard Actions and Outcomes Chart determines if it worked or not. The Game Master can add a difficulty modifier if item is particularly intricate.
  3. For successful rolls, the chart below determines how long the item lasts before breaking.

Tinkered Item Durability

For a partial success (3), the item may also not work quite as expected.

Roll Duration
3 1 Turn
4/5 3 Turns
6 5 Turns

Animorph

Animorph lets an adventurer turn into an animal for a random number of turns.

Here’s how it works:

  1. The adventurer announces the animal they want to transform into.
  2. They roll a die, and turn into the animal for that many turns. They cannot transform back until that number of turns has passed.
  3. After they transform back into human form, they must wait one turn before they can use animorph again.

The adventurer will pick up all of the benefits and limitations of the animal they choose. For example, if they chose a turtle, they may have added protection during a battle, but move far more slowly if they choose to flee.

You can choose to make this a spell that needs to be case, or a piece of equipment that has magical properties.

Random Effects

One way to make the game more interesting is to add random effects for certain equipment, items, or spells.

For example, adventurers may find an unlabeled talisman in an abandoned camp. If they choose to use the talisman, roll a die to determine what happens.

Roll Effect
1/2 Fall into a magical sleep
2/4 Gain strength for 1 turn
5/6 Gain flight for 3 turns

Carry-On Rules

If your adventurers are collecting a lot of equipment and items on their travels, you may want to implement a carry-on rule that sets a limit to the number of items any one player can bring with them.

If they want to take a new items above that amount, they’ll have to abandon an existing item in their pack.

Candy Coins

If the adventurers receive gold as a reward, it can be fun to make the gold pieces of actual candy that they can eat.

Chocolate coins are great for this, but any candy works!

Counting & Math

Depending on the age of your adventurers, you can make the game a bit more educational by requiring them to do math for their die rolls.

This includes…

  • Counting the number of dots on each die
  • Determining which one is the biggest/highest
  • Doing division when healing between encounters
  • Adding or subtracting modifiers to their die rolls

DIY Maps

If your adventurers love playing with blocks or drawing, you might have them create the maps or draw the creatures for your adventures.

Legos, wooden blocks, popsicle sticks, construction paper and crayons… use whatever you have at home.