The Most Insane One Page Rules Ever?

‘When men multiplied in the land and developed their own technologies rivalling the gods in power, the gods considered allowing men to join their pantheon. A lesser of the gods knowing what was in men’s hearts gave each of them the power of carnomancy, the ability to manipulate their physical forms to their own wills. The kingdoms of men immediately descended into an age of nightmares and chaos. Now The Court attempts to maintain control over the new fleshscape with the hope that humanity can still rise into the pantheon. The Schism resist the Court and seek vengeance on the gods. The Sacrosanct seek only to see how far flesh can be transformed.‘

My main hobby project of late has all been to do with the one page game jam, basically see what kind of game you can fit onto a single sheet of A4. Typically with me it’s always something odd and skirmishy, but this time round things got very strange very quickly.

Without explaining too much of the rules, they are based on my own Simple Toy Soldier system, using polygonal dice to determine the number of actions a figure has on a given turn, based on five skill levels – Roaches that use a D4, Rabble D6, Regular D8, Blooded D10 and Chosen D12, straightforward enough.

Where things become very un-straightforward (bentbackward?), is in the class and race system. We started out with the basics, thief, warrior, wizard etc, and simple races – human, elf, dwarf, and slowly those lists grew, got new more thematic names, classes became professions, races became fleshtypes, until we had twenty of each. These aren’t simple stat alterations but a list of special rules and abilities. For example one of the simpler professions is Assassin: Critically hits on a natural 5 or 6. They are not deployed as normal but can be put anywhere in play before their first activation roll. And one of the stranger professions is Puppeteer: Once per activation for one action move this incarn or any incarn within 10 to anywhere else within 10. Incarn’s are miniatures by the way. A simple fleshtype is a Brutal: +3 to their activation roll if within 5 of an enemy incarn. And a stranger one is a Shadow: When in base contact with an incarn, spend 3 actions to move into base contact with any other incarn. Like I said there’s twenty of each and each of your minis takes two of each. Taking that alongside our five levels and ten pieces of equipment that makes a possible 72,922,000 builds if you don’t take more than two pieces of equipment per figure that is.

Scenarios are another thing, six basic objectives and you have to take two different ones, your opponent also gets two which may or may not be the same as yours, and then the game gets a single twist again from a list of six, this all builds to a possible 54,000 scenarios.

That’s not to say any of this makes a good game, although I have had a lot of fun in playtesting, but it does at least offer a huge amount of variety on a single page, a frankly overwhelming amount of variety on a side of A4. How am I supposed to playtest nearly 73 million character builds in 54 thousand scenarios?