Now that I've explained the rules of Dungeons and Dragons, it's time to talk about the system we use, Runner's Fortune. To start off, it's important to mention that Runner's Fortune has some similarities and some differences from what D&D players are used to. In order to understand fully, let me give some history of the system.
The History
Runner's Fortune started at least seven years ago (realistically a bit longer but this is when I came into the picture), when my husband and fellow creator of Neko-Maoh Games started homebrewing Dungeons and Dragons. It started simply with making some minor adjustments to classes and powers as well as sometimes creating a class that didn't exist in D&D. For my whole first campaign, the War on Heaven, this is the system we used. In the years after that, we tried to start several more campaigns, but nothing quite stuck as we didn't play for more than a month or so with any group. That was, until we moved to the south side of Denver and we made several friends who were happy to join us long term and all worked well together. This is when Nate started heavily modifying the game, creating more classes, and completely customizing pre-existing classes to fit what people wanted for their characters. This session was the Apex Adventurers campaign that started in 2020. At this time, we called it Dungeons and Pathfinders as the system still relied heavily on the D&D systems as well as being influenced by Pathfinders. Though Nate made modifications throughout this game, we used Dungeons and Pathfinders as the title. We also did a short stint playing our science fiction version, Starships and Sorcerers, which used the same system. We got through the Apex Adventurers campaign, completing it at the end of 2021. It was at the beginning of the year 2022 when we began the Library of Taba and Pillars of Sypetia campaigns that we are currently playing on our channel. At this point, we had named the system Nate made, Runner's Fortune, as it was heavily modified and Nate had spent a lot of time on it. But it wasn't until somewhere around October or November 2022 that Nate realized it was still just a homebrewed version of Dungeons and Dragons, which is coming out with a new version that fixes a lot of problems we had with D&D and made our system obsolete. After he and I discussed this, we came up with a solution (mostly him) that made Runner's Fortune it's own system and made it something that we love. As of the end December 2022, everyone in our campaigns have switched over to the new system.
The Differences
Now that you know how Runner's Fortune came about, let's talk about the differences. When we created this "final" version of Runner's Fortune, the one thing we decided on is that we wanted the ultimate customization of your character. Though there may be minor changes to powers and skills in the future, this version is the final set up of our TTRPG. Unlike D&D that has the six main stats and classes, Runner's Fortune does not have those things. There is no strength, constitution, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence, or charisma that affects your skills. And while there are still powers, they are not connected to a class. So, what is Runner's Fortune? Runner's Fortune is a point based system, and the way it works is that at each level up, you get a certain amount of skill points that you get to allocate to whatever skills you want them to be in up to a certain amount. At the beginning of character creation, you roll three d4's and take the highest number. Do this four times and pick three of the numbers. The skills are separated into three categories, and this number that you rolled determines the highest amount of points you can put into a single skill at every level (for example, four at lvl 1, 8 at lvl 2, 12 at lvl 3, and so on). The three skill categories are Practiced Skills, Intellect Skills, and Aptitude Skills. I will list all of the skills at the bottom of this post, so you can look at them if you are interested. Now, for what powers you can get, the only limit is your level. You can pick any power you want as long as you are a high enough level to take it and you have a high enough Power skill. You put points into that skill in order to determine how many powers you can take. All the skills number is cut in half from the amount you put in there to determine your bonus to that skill, so powers skill is cut in half and then doubled from that cut in half. This is important because you can't have an odd number of powers because of this. As for races, Runner's Fortune does have them, though we call them lineages, and they do give you certain powers, but they don't give you bonuses to any stats. The thing that gives you a bonus is a new feature that isn't a part of D&D, guilds. Every character has to be a part of a guild (there is a Guild of the Unaligned if you don't want to pick one) and that guild will give you a bonus to 4 stats. That way, instead of having races be something that you pick based on what class you have to get the best stats, you can pick whatever race you want and still practice any kind of abilities that you want. The third big difference between D&D and Runner's Fortune is that instead of having daily, encounter, or whatever types of powers, all characters have "Power Points" that are determined by the points you put into skills. All powers require a certain amount of power points to use that you subtract every time you use a power. It's as simple as that. You regain all power points when you take a long rest. There are no feats as they are all passive abilities.
The Similarities
Now that you know the differences, what makes Runner's Fortune and Dungeons and Dragons the same? Well, everything else is pretty much the same. You have your basic roleplaying and gameplay that are quite similar. Just like in D&D and Pathfinder, you have a GM (game master) that runs the game and every player has a character (or two if you need a bigger party). You follow the story that the GM sets out for you. You go through dungeons and fight bad guys/monsters, and the way combat works is the same. Everyone rolls an initiative score and when it's your turn, you have certain things you can do (a standard, a minor, and a move in Runner's Fortune which I believe is the same in D&D) and the powers that you use to do damage requires you to roll a d20 to hit and then a dice to do damage. It's that simple really.
Conclusion
While Runner's Fortune runs similarly to D&D, it is a game meant to give you more customization of your character and a wider range of things you can do. You can pick the skills you want, the powers you want, and play your character how you want. If that sounds like something that might be interesting to you, please support us at our YouTube Channel, Neko-Maoh Games (link at the bottom). The more views we have, the more likely we'll be able to publish our manual for Runner's Fortune so other people can play it too. We want to share our system with the world, and we hope you all like it.
Skills
Now, to show you want skills we have, first I want to give you the D&D skills. I'm afraid I don't have the most updated version as we played 3.5 when we did actually play D&D, but here is a list of the skills in that version:
Acrobatics, Arcana, Athletics, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Endurance, Heal, History, Insight, Intimidate, Nature, Perception, Religion, Stealth, Streetwise, and Thievery
As for Runner's Fortune, here are the Skills that you can choose between:
Practiced Skills: Armor, Athleticism, Animal Handling, Initiative, Perception, Perform, Ride, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Weapon- One Handed, Weapon- Two Handed, Weapon- Thrown, and Weapon- Heavy
Intellect Skills: Appraise, Craft- Creative, Craft- Technical, Enchantment, Healing, Insight, Knowledge- Apothecary, Knowledge- History, Knowledge- Science, Linguistics, Power, Thievery, Willpower
Aptitude Skills: Charisma- Guile, Charisma- Intimidate, Charisma- Persuasion, Charisma- Seduction, Health, Luck, Physicality, Recovery, Resistance, Wisdom- Psionics, Wisdom- Religion, Wisdom- Shadow, Wisdom- Spellwork
If you want more information on these skills or how Runner's Fortune works, leave a comment and maybe I'll do a whole blogpost on the skills if people are interested. Some of these might change as the system is not 100% finished yet, but this is pretty much complete. I'll make some changes to this post as needed if things change.
If you haven't checked out our YouTube Channel yet, please do! You can find it here:
If you want to read more about the War on Heaven campaign, you can read that here:
And if you want to read about the Apex Adventurers campaign, you can find that here:
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