While I’ve been spending a lot of time working on the Hespera 2e playtest recently, that hasn’t stopped me from wanting to make an official SRD for the system that I used in You Are Cordially Invited and Labyrinth Break!, an as-yet-and-probably-always-unpublished game about minotaurs trying to escape Crete. So I figured, why not just go ahead and release that official SRD now, as a little palate cleanser? Presenting: the Pine SRD!

On names

Originally the three abilities were lights, camera, and action, and the system was called the Lights, Camera, Action! system, but as you can probably guess there are already several of those. It’s called Pine now because it’s lightweight, easy to work with, but maybe not something you want to build your entire table out of.

Pine SRD

Pine is a lightweight and flexible micro-RPG designed for playing comedy one-shots, although with a little finessing it can probably be used for ongoing games. You’ll need one Guide to run the game and one or more players to control the main characters (usually one each, but you do you boo).

Character creation

Characters in Pine are made up of:

  1. Abilities
  2. Stress
  3. Signature equipment
  4. Nemesis (reroll at the beginning of each session)

Abilities and stress

By default, there are three abilities: charm, action, and smarts, given as die sizes ranging from d6 to d10. When creating a character, choose one of the following:

  • Set all three abilities to d8 and set max stress to 4.
  • Set one ability to d10, another to d8, and the last to d6. Set max stress to 3.

You’ll roll charm when doing something social, action when doing something physical, and smarts when doing something that requires smarts.

Signature equipment

Each Pine game can choose its own way to distribute signature equipment. Freeform entries or rolling on a random table are good options.

Nemesis

Nemeses are set at the start of the session, and must come from either a random table or selected by a list. It’s important that multiple players be allowed to roll the same nemesis.

Each nemesis starts with an animosity of 1 plus the number of characters who have them as their nemesis for the session. Whenever you succeed on a roll against a nemesis, that nemesis lowers their animosity by 1. When their animosity reaches 0, they die, get too injured to continue, flee for the rest of the session, etc.

Nemeses particularly hate characters who have them as their listed nemesis, and will preferentially target them. Nemeses who didn’t get chosen either help the other nemeses or don’t show up. Your call.

Rolling

When something is dangerous or failure is interesting, the Guide can call for a roll.

Grab the die corresponding to your most relevant ability (the Guide has the final say). Situational advantages add one additional die of the same size per source of advantage. Using your signature gear in a situation in which it could help increases all dice by one step.

The Guide will grab a die related to the difficulty of the task at hand:

Difficulty Die size
Trivial d4
Easy d6
Average d8
Hard d10
Crushing d12

Increase the Guide’s die size by one step for every source of situational disadvantage. Each level of disadvantage past d12 adds 1 to the final roll instead of increasing the die size.

Now that you and the Guide both have your dice, roll them! You’ll keep your highest die, and the Guide will keep their only die. Then, compare them:

Result Effect
You roll higher than the maximum possible Guide roll You get what you wanted in a particularly impressive fashion, and you either increase the die size of your next roll by 1 step, or lower your stress by 1. Your choice.
You roll equal to or higher than the Guide, but not more than their maximum possible roll You get what you wanted.
The Guide rolls higher than you, but not more than your maximum possible roll You either don’t get what you wanted, or you do get what you wanted but take a point of stress. Guide’s choice, and in the non-stress scenario the failure should propel the story forward in some way rather than grinding it to a halt.
The Guide rolls higher than your maximum possible roll You fail to get what you wanted in a particularly impressive fashion, and you take a point of stress.

Stress and damage

When you fail rolls, you can take stress as a consequence. Taking stress up to your max stress is free, but if you take stress while already at your max you take damage instead. The first point of damage crosses out the top row of the roll result table, so the best result you can get on a roll is a normal success. The second point of damage crosses out the next row, so the best result you can get on a roll is a mixed success. The third point of damage takes you out of the game until you recover at least one point of damage.

Recovery

Once per session, another player or friendly NPC can help you recover. How long this takes, and whether it involves a roll on their part, depends on the fiction. If successful, you lower both your damage and stress by 1.