KITH: A Merry Band of Misfits - An OSR Style Game Focused on Teamwork and the Chaotic Energy a party can bring!
Created for One-Page RPG Jam 2023, KITH is an OSR game inspired by Cairn, Knave, Into the Odd, Quest, and more - with a focus on teamwork and the chaotic energy that a party can bring.
Kith: Game Description
Your group is a band of misfits that have hit a rough patch and are having trouble making ends meet. However, to your benefit (or maybe not), a mysterious patron has gifted you a home (well... barely) in exchange for doing odd tasks and adventuring quests. In exchange, you get the keep the treasure you find and use it to upgrade your new digs into something a bit cozier!
-----
I fell in love with the simplicity of OSR-style games like Cairn, Knave, Into the Odd, and more, and wanted to distill many of my favorite rules into one place. Quest was also an inspiration for me with some of its design elements so I also took from that as well.
I really wanted to create a game that encouraged players to work together or help each other out. One mechanic that I thought would be cool, was to give each player a max pool of 3 points, earned like inspiration in 5e, that players could only use their teammates. I called these Kin Points in the game, and allow you to spend a point to heal a teammate, give them advantage on their next roll, heal an exhaustion (for spellcasting), or shield/take damage from another character. These could be spent whenever they want, even in mid-battle, as long as the GM and the table is cool with it. For example, they could spend a point to shield a player who has low health to prevent them from dying etc.
There are also some mechanics in there for some "movie-magic" shenanigans, which I honestly love from 5e but with higher stakes for failure if the party attempts them.
I think I found myself designing for a huge game system rather than a one-pager, making this fit on page was super hard! However, I found this experience rewarding, and really makes you push something out. This system is very unbalanced (at least the mechanics I added) and not playtested so I would love feedback on it so please leave a comment on the itch page or shoot me an email at sales@minvathemes.com. And please also visit my store where I design other resources for other games and sell stickers: minvarpg.com. Also if you haven't already played some of the games I mentioned above for inspiration, I encourage you to try them out and support the community. I heavily and obviously used my favorite rules from those games so if you like mine - you'll love theirs.