Building on Johnn Four’s suggestion that we build “minimum viable adventures” focused around some core situations and then improvise as we need at the table, I’ve been musing around the minimum viable rules required for play.

Mileage varies based on the rules engine, of course, yet it seems to me that we will be fine as long as we have some form of core resolution system to help adjudicate the uncertain actions characters make.

For me, this is the 3D6 Success Roll from GURPS but it could as easily be the 1D20 Check from 3rd-5th Edition D&D, or whatever lies at the heart of your chosen game. You can do a great deal with that simple resolution tool.

That said, as I mused in a recent episode of Roleplay Rescue, there’s strong value in having a damage system in play too. When the characters are in peril, it’s useful to be able to measure injury and the impact on their effectiveness because “bang, you’re dead” is less fun than you think.

Beyond these basics, I prefer a Reaction Table of some kind – a way to measure or adjudicate the responses of NPCs that I haven’t defined as enemies or friends of the player characters. It makes for a more dynamic world and often leads to surprises even for the GM at the table.

I suppose that there are many implied further mechanisms to consider but for starters, I believe the heart of my approach to roleplaying game rules is to run on Success Rolls, Damage Rolls, and Reaction Rolls. How convenient that my favourite system has all three at the core of the engine.

Game on!