microluxe20/microluxe20

A rework of the Microlite20 rules.

A free, open source tabletop game based on the Microlite20 ruleset.

---

Microluxe20 is a minimalist tabletop role-playing game designed with simplicity in mind. It is designed to be a stand-in replacement for any SRD based tabletop adventure. The main goal is to utilize the simplicity of Microlite20, while also adding various races, classes, and game-balancing tweaks. It also strives to clarify some of the more confusing parts of the Microlite20 system.

Online Handbook

To dive right into the game, check out the following online resources:

Complete Handbook

Terador Campaign Setting

Map of Terador

Races of Terador

Microluxe20 features a pre-designed campaign setting, named "Terador" for ease-of-use. However, because of the simplicity of the rules, custom and homebrew campaign settings are very easy to implement. Definitely feel free to use your own setting, races, and other homebrew content!

Downloads

The latest official release can be downloaded here!

Contributing

If you want to contribute to the game's handbooks, or want to craft your own custom release, please check out the Contributing Guidelines.

Authors & Contributors

Keli Grubb ([email protected])

Doug Rich

Connor Bashinski

Webster Sheets

Licensing

The markdown content in this project is licensed under the Open Game License. The rest of the project is licensed under the ISC license.

microluxe20's Issues

Table of contents in PDF

As a quality of life improvement, it would be nice to have table of contents metadata in the PDF. (Specifically, the TOC that shows in the sidebar of the PDF viewer, rather than as a page within the PDF.) This would make the PDFs easier to skim.

From a brief look at wkhtmltopdf I think the toc option may achieve this?

Derivative Licensing

Your README mentions procedures for releasing derivative works in the CONTRIBUTING.md file, but there's no relevant section in the actual document. What specifically are the terms?

Related to that, I am adapting the M20 rules to work with space/sci-fi settings, and I wanted to get some confirmation on what you're okay with inheriting from the default M20 'Product Identity'.

Can I inherit (I'll add to the list as I come across things):

• 'Terador' as the generic name for the setting / Space-UN?
• The list of Psion powers (with moderate tweaking to fit the setting)?
• The Microluxe20 name (to call the rules Microluxe20 Space)?

Also, if I'm reading the LICENSE right, you are claiming your own name as Product Identity, when it is already covered as a Trademark in section 1.

Perhaps consider licensing the non-document portions of the project (build files, essentially) under MIT? I don't think the OGL applies well to build tooling code. Done!

Clarify Spell Component/Requirements

As discussed in #23, there is a single sentence regarding spell components being an item requirement, but thats it. They're not referenced or explained anywhere else. This is a remnant from SRD based rules that hung around to make things easy to convert, but instead, makes things confusing/difficult.

For microluxe20, either remove spell components entirely or add a tiny section including information on what spell components are and why they'd be required for a spellcaster.

Attack-based (instead of save based) Spellcasting

Based on the conversation in #23, Spellcasting could highly benefit from being action/attack based instead of defense/save based.

As it currently stands, Spell DC is a static number and monsters roll against the Spell DC to see if they can escape the spell's effects. However, save-based spellcasting is backwards to traditional combat.

There should be a balanced manner in which spells can be offensive, with the target having a static defense against them (although it may be useful to look at still keeping a dynamic defense based on relevant dc saves, if this is not too confusing or complicated).

[idea] multiclass

I was thinking about the possibility to implement multiclass in Microluxe20.

My idea is there only exists 4 or 5 basic and elemental classes.
Fighter, Rogue, Mage, and Cleric (and maybe Psion)

The rest is a multiclass combination of these basic classes.

The first combination that comes to mind is the Paladin, which is partly Fighter / Cleric (I leave it to the player's and GM discretion that level is of each one)

• Druid would be a Cleric (of some deity of the nature)
• Ranger could mix levels of Fighter / Rogue
• Illusionist is finally a type of Mage
• Bard is a mix between Fighter, Rogue and Mage

Eventually I leave the freedom of creating other types of classes based on these mixtures: like a Barbarian (which is a kind of fighter), a Warlock Mage/Cleric, and so on.

Each level the player would decide which class he gonna level-up.

Ok, maybe that opens some issues about Mage Schools (or maybe a more abstract clasification like a "symbol" influence) and Deities but I leave that for another issue ;)

Clarify Magic Attack Bonus Usage

Based on the conversation in #23, the "bonus" system is fairly easy to understand for Melee and Missile, but the Magic bonus seems unused at best and confusing at worst.

Personally, in my games, I have yet to use the Magic Bonus, and the only time it seems to be relevant is when a spellcaster uses their wand/staff in combat (which almost never happens in a non melee fashion). As @Web-eWorks has stated, perhaps this bonus can be incorporated into the current spells to make them scale well as the character progresses.

Extend Build Process to generate intermediary HTML files.

In order to host a copy of the rules online, we will need a build step that pre-processes the markdown, and generates HTML files without rendering them to PDF.

These HTML files do not (and should not) need to include the entire HTML document tree, just the HTML elements pursuant to the source markdown.

The generated HTML should be identical to the HTML generated for the PDF versions.

[Tooling Suggestion] Split Handbook into multiple topical files

At the moment, the Handbook is a slightly unwieldy ~1600 lines and 92KB. I think there might be some benefit to splitting the Handbook up into several smaller topical documents.

My initial thought is to split the spell, equipment, and/or monster lists into their own document (or documents), much like the races and lore documents. I'm not 100% sold on the idea yet, but I figured I'd put it out there for perusal.

Switch from PhantomJS to wkhtmltopdf

PhantomJS, as nice as it is, is an absolutely terrible solution for generating PDF documents from markdown sources.

It is slow (sometimes taking upwards of 30 seconds to generate a release), buggy (having non-obvious issues with font and image loading), obtuse (there's no way to debug resource loading or DOM properties like layout), and worst of all, it renders page content as static images and embeds the images into the PDF, instead of generating the appropriate PDF text directives. This means that core features PDF features like search and text selection are impossible - how do you search an image?

Instead, we will be investigating and ultimately switching to either pandoc or wkhtmltopdf, depending upon ease of use, speed, and developer overhead. This will allow us to have properly searchable and selectable PDF documents, enable support for PDF outlines, and allow us to drop a large, slow dependency.

I am currently leaning towards wkhtmltopdf due to it's lightweight nature and the fact that pandoc depends on 60+ MB of haskell modules, but feature support may change the eventual decision.

As an addendum, this will likely require us to upgrade our travis environment to Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial, as it ships newer versions of the packages we'll require.

Magic Item Creation Table/Section

As discussed in #23, create a magic item section in the appendix that has some more useful tables & information on how to create and use magical items.

This magical items section would include wands, rods (and other foci), staves, and potions. More detailed information on proposed ideas for each of these can be found in the linked issue (23).

Empty character sheet

I've downloaded this file: https://github.com/kgrubb/microluxe20/releases/download/1.5.0/microluxe20_1.5.0.zip

and the document microluxe20-cs.pdf is empty (zero byte). Looks like something's wrong in the 1.5 release...

Make a list of differences comparing to Microlite20

The official site claims that "Microluxe20 is heavily based off of Microlite20", assuming it is a different system, not just Microlite20 with some changes. However, I've found not so much differences so far. It would be nice if Microlite20 payers had a list of differences comparing to Microlite20 itself.

Feedback Wanted: Redesigned Magic Casting

Microluxe20 currently uses a HP-pool based magic system, where spellcasting drains the caster's HP and puts them in a special state where they cannot heal conventionally.

This makes spellcasters extremely squishy (arguably a good thing given Microluxe20 is based on the 3.5e SRD) and emphasizes staying out of frontline combat, but adds a significant amount of complexity to the rules regarding healing and spellcasting and makes it more difficult to play spellcasters as a low-HP state compounds on the existing requirement for most spellcasters to avoid wearing armor.

I'd propose to replace the HP-pool based magic casting system with a "flat MP" system where spells are cast from a separate magic point pool and the Arcane / Divine influence rules are no longer needed. The numeric costs of all spellcasting would remain the same, but a character's MP pool would be set at something similar to 1/2 Max HP + MIND Stat to maintain a similar balance with the HP-based system.

Under this system, spellcasters would use healing potions etc. as normal for non-spellcasting characters, though healing would not restore any MP points lost; fully depleting a character's MP pool would most likely cause a penalty on all skill checks made while remaining at zero MP, and MP would be restored by resting as usual for HP.

I think this change would overall reduce complexity of the spellcasting system, allow for easier balancing of spellcasters in the future if required, and reduce one of the confusing aspects of Microluxe20 compared to D&D 3.5e or 5e. However, I'd like to get some community feedback (if anyone still reads these issues) before making a decision one way or another - I'm going to try to run these proposed changes in a game as well, but your feedback is appreciated!

Increase Text Font Size

So I decided to do a print test of M20 Space. It... didn't turn out well. I'm using the same font size as the M20 core, and it's not really a legible size on paper.

This is 8.5x11 paper in a 6.5MP image, by the way. I did a comparison with a D&D 4E rulebook, and the book's font is easily 1.5x the size. (It's also 300+ pages, though.)

The M20 font size is 95% of 8px (as much sense as that makes). Ideally, I'd want it at a minimum of 10px, if not more. My target is the paper being easily legible at arm's-length and rotated ~60 degrees away from the face.

I know you wanted to keep a maximum page count; this would need to increase that by about 10-20%.

I'll fiddle with the font size on M20 Space, and when I get something that works, I'll drop it here as another photo for consideration.

[Suggestion] Character sheet should be built off some kind of markup

Take your pick of LaTeX or HTML, but right now it is checked in as a binary that can't be edited.

I've got an idea for HTML and could plug it into the build process if you'd be interested in seeing a pull request.

[Tooling] Move Equipment Tables to Editable Format

Multi-column tables, as currently implemented, are extremely painful to edit in Markdown. I propose (in concert with #24) moving the various tables into an external file written in YAML (or similar easy-to-edit data language, so not JSON), and having the build process convert them into Markdown or even straight HTML tables.

1.8.0 Misc Tasks

These are the tasks I want to get done for a 1.8.0 release.

• Set up build tooling for #49
• Rewrite Spellcasting (#29, #30)
• Overhaul and tweak GM's guide
  • Creature List
  • Trap List
  • Poisons / Diseases
  • Suggestions / guidelines for table conduct and roleplaying
• Overhaul and tweak Equipment Section
  • Drop weights from items.
  • Slim the Adventuring Gear section, condense some items into a catch-all 'Adventurer's Gear' item.
• Restructure the handbook introduction
  • Finish the TODO I accidentally left in.

EDIT: Some of this has been split into the 1.9.x series.

Once these are accomplished, I think the 1.x branch will be done, and work can start (eventually) on the 2.x series. When the 1.x branch goes stable, I want to poke donjon about supporting Microluxe20 as well as Microlite20.

Feel free to make this a project and/or split it into several issues.

(Also, @kgrubb, is there a place I could ping you for answers / input with less lag than the Issues board? Would the M20 Discord work?)

[suggestion] Forged

I was wondering if the Forged would heal to a normal rate, just like any other race in Terador.

And then I thought, what would happen if the forged people could not have the need to eat or affected by hot or freezing weather?, or maybe sleep? but, as a penalty, they would not receive any benefit for a short-rest.

I dont know, I just imagine them like a Golems or Robots, maybe their "skin" is made of some "self healing material" but to me should take more time to heal.

Is this dead?

I was going to submit a typo issue, but I see open issues from 2018 and no updates in 2 years. Please let me know.

Thx!

Host M20 Documents on Microluxe20.com

Pursuant to our discussion on other issues, I'm making this to track what needs to be done. These can be split into sub-issues at your convenience.

• Extend build process to create combined PDFs for release.
• Add MD-to-HTML build step for online-hosted version.
• Extend current site to host the HTML rule-book.
  • Move to Jekyll (or another static site generator)
  • Stay with static HTML
• Add CI job to update the website's copy of the rulebook when new releases are cut.

Also, I wanted to ask – what's the hosting situation for 'officially-licensed' derivative works?

I'm planning on sticking the M20 space rules on a GH-Pages site when I get done; would a CNAME redirect from microluxe20.com be possible? Something like space.microluxe20.com? Obviously, this would be subject to periodic review regarding the 'officially-licensed' status, etc.

Add Traits system

While I was working on M20 Space, I came up with a system that may work well in base M20. I call it Traits (or Traits and Quirks, but that's a mouthful to refer to).

The gist of the system is that characters gain situational bonuses or maluses to certain rolls, related to the roleplaying aspect of the character. For example, if a character has a deathly fear of snakes and has trained with bullwhips all their life (I have absolutely no idea who I'm referring to), they may take a trait to reflect that, expressed like this:

Trait: -3 to all Mind rolls in the presence of snakes.
Trait: +2 to attacks with a Bullwhip

The way I have it set up in M20 Space is that Traits cost 'trait points' to purchase positive traits, and give trait points when taking negative traits. The specific cost is derived by multiplying the numeric value with a factor related to the specific roll:

Roll	Factor
Attack	4
Stat	3
Skill	2
Stat+Skill	1

Thus, the aforementioned snake trait gives 9 Trait points that could be spent on other traits or possibly converted into skill points (or something). When combined with the Bullwhip trait, 1 skill point is left, which could be spent on Mind+Knowledge rolls involving ancient Hebrew artifacts, for example.

The factor for Attacks is improvised at the last second and subject to change, as M20 Space uses Stat+Skill for attacks rather than Level+Stat.

On level-up, (or at the Gamemaster's discretion) characters can gain, strengthen, weaken, or lose traits via GM fiat or paying the appropriate cost. (Perhaps through Skill point conversion? 1 SP -> 10 TP?)

A good example is that a Gamemaster can award a positive trait to a character for heroic or extraordinary action, or a negative trait as a consequence or side-effect of a bad or dumb action.

@kgrubb Thoughts?

1.9.0 Misc Tasks

Splitting some tasks from the 1.8.0 release to get it done faster.

• Write some concrete rules for enchanting / improving items and gear:
  • Enchanting limited-duration spells as permanent passive effects
  • Handling limited-duration-spell active items: HP cost / cooldown, etc.
  • Material-based effects / bonuses
• Consider mechanics to add some combat variety to melee classes beyond "hit it with a stick"
  • Attacks of Opportunity
  • More uses for large attack bonuses: called shots, flurry of blows, etc.
  • Less-than-lethal actions: knockouts, chokes, incapacitating strikes, etc.
  • Differentiate weapon types so it's more than just a linear damage progression.
• Improve the Terador setting:
  • Establish info for module writers
  • Write up some local settings for adventures - cities, towns, landmarks, etc.
• Spells / Powers:
  • Implement racial abilities, ala #18
  • Add some general purpose spells to be applied to wands, gear, etc. Ref. #34,
  • Add a few class-specific metamagic spells (at levels 4, 8, 12, 16)
  • Add spell scaling with subattacks, or restrict subattacks to physical weapons only.
  • Add a small handful of Paladin spells (2-3 each at level 2, 4, 6, 8)
    Fighters have significant damage bonuses, Paladins need something to make them a bit less underpowered.
  • Add class-specific abilities at level 5 to all classes.
  • Add class-specific abilities at levels 10, 15, 20.
  • (Tentative) Add Necromancer class
• Add non-magical healing items and mechanics
• Rebalance how resting heals characters
• Write an introductory adventure module (or three)
  Modules should be no more than 30 pages apiece (ideally 10-15), be fairly short (2-5 sessions max), set for no higher than 7th level (1-3, 3-5, 5-7?), and include a mix of activities.

Weight Mechanics / Drop weight listings from equipment tables.

Weight isn't a mechanic in the M20 rulebook. I need to refactor the equipment lists as a result of the font size change, and I don't see what the weight listings are actually useful for, aside from fluff.

Can I remove the weight columns, or would you rather me leave it in?

Stat Damage

An interesting conundrum - some monsters and attacks in the SRD deal damage directly to stats.

Shadows, for example, deal 1d6 damage directly to the STR stat, and when it reaches 0, the character dies. (Stats are restored after a full rest, I'm assuming)

In the SRD, this is reasonably balanced, as (from what I remember of 5e character creation) stats are in the 8-15 range at creation - rather well outside of the range of even a 10th level Fighter in Microluxe.

Currently, I think the way I'm going to handle this in my game is to make Incorporeal Touch an automatic-hit attack dealing 1d6 normal damage, and requiring a STR save against a certain DC to resist the damage, though I'm open to suggestions.

[Clarification] Magic Rules

As it stands, the rules for spellcasters and their abilities are uncomfortably vague. Do spellcasters make a Magic attack to cast a spell(with the target then making a check vs Spell DC), or is it automatic? The current rules text is completely unclear on this matter. Do spellcasters have an actual damage-dealing Magic attack, independent of their spells?

Additionally, the rules are completely lacking a section on wands, staves, potions, etc, as well as the dubious 'spell components'. This might not be so bad with a background coming from D&D/d20, but A: I've never played D&D in my life, and B: this is supposed(if I'm remembering it right) to be a batteries-included rule system.

I've got a PR in the works with some fixes to errors in the rules, but I wanted to get some information on this.

more XP examples

Could add more examples of giving XP to players??
I still cannot understand de "+1 when doubling" rule

Proposed Exploit/Difficulty Changes

I want to get some feedback on these changes before I promote them to accepted status. They are intended to smooth over some potential exploits and mesh in a little better with the rest of the ruleset.

1. Change short rests to be variable length and restore STR+Phys HP per hour instead of a flat ¼ of Max HP. As a counterpoint, make a long rest take 8 hours instead of 4.

   This is intended to reduce the behavior of taking "catnaps" in the middle of a dungeon, and also addresses the fact that all characters are apparently cartoon superheroes regarding how fast they heal. This could likely be left up to the gamemaster's discretion as a game-level difficulty switch.

2. Introduce healing items into the standard equipment. E.g. bandage, healing kit, potion, etc. Bandages could be created from Adventurer's Gear and heal over time, while a healing kit would restore much more HP both upfront and over time, but would need to be restocked after a certain number of uses.

3. Make all spells, even spells on staves and Signature Spells, cost a minimum of 1HP to cast. While I can buy that a signature spell is much more efficient because of the level of practice the caster has with it, making it free is not exactly the most logical or balanced decision. I know I have a pyromaniac druid in my party who can (and does) spam a free Produce Flame once a turn, every turn, which doesn't fit into the way spellcasting is designed to operate in Microluxe20.

   This change should probably not be applied to cantrips/orisons/level 1 spells, if only to represent the fact that a character has been using those (almost) since birth and the HP cost is thus negligible.

These changes are on track for the 1.9.0 release, and as such this issue will stay open for a few months while other work is being done.