GLOGllow Knight: Prelude and Core Rules

Considering that Silksong is coming to us in a week or so, I think this would be a good time to talk about a related project of mine.

But first, a little context is needed.

Let's talk about the Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG 

In the distant year of 2018, a thread appeared on 4chan's /tg/ board discussing a potential TTRPG based in the world of Hollow Knight (a Metroidvania set in a dying kingdom of bugs released the year before). Theory was crafted, worlds were built, art was drawn, many aspects of this theoretical game decided seemingly unanimously early on (let's make the players build their bugs out of parts instead of having a set number of playable species, let's have dice pools because they're fun to roll etc.). Seeing the traction the idea has gained, the OP decided to coordinate the efforts further and made a Discord server, which some of the chucklefucks in the thread actually joined.

I was one of those chucklefucks.

In the less distant year of 2021, after some years of productive discussion mixed with less than productive bickering, old people leaving, new people joining, and games that were supposed to be playtests turning out to be sprawling campaigns lasting for actual years, the process of constant unorganized changes to the ruleset came to a halt. Noticing that loss of momentum, one of the project members (and you could certainly call it a project by now) decided to take matters into their own hands and assemble the raw, unedited google doc containing all of the core rules together with some of the original art produced during that time and assemble something resembling a proper rulebook (or a "Pretty PDF", as it has been known internally).

I was thi- eh you get the idea. In the following two weeks, I forced myself to learn the bare minimum of layout that could be applied to a Google Doc and began working on the rulebook. Then I decided to do some basic marketing, made a post on Reddit and set up an itch.io page.

In conclusion, the result was this: The Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG.

Azor of Branchaven, the one PC I actually got to play for non-insignificant amount of time

Why?

Some personal grief that I had at the moment aside, my primary motivation for actually getting the game out was to get as many eyes on it as possible, and make sure none of our efforts were in vain.

Because, honestly, I didn't really like the final product much.

Yes, there were good ideas here and there, and the resulting system I would call at least "okay" in terms of quality and playability, but ultimately, I had too many grievances with it. 

Character creation (aka "Build-a-Bug", aka everyone's favorite part of the system) used what essentially is a point-buy system, except the points spent determined the amount of food the bug required to consume every day, which in practice turned out to be way too GM fiat-dependent. Combat used an Action Point-like Stamina system, which, combined with active defense, made single turns last for way too long, and a basic attack action could require 2-3 rolls to resolve (attack roll - defense roll - soak roll). We also provided virtually no GM support, which meant that NPCs had to function by player rules, which bogged down the flow of combat even further. Absorption, one of the mechanics, used modulo for Christ's sake.

So, as I was working on the layout and making Reddit posts and setting up the public Discord server, I figured that my best chance to eventually fix all the problems that I had was to make the game as visible as possible, in the hopes that someone, sometime in the future will find the system, recognize its issues, and make something better while being inspired by it. I wanted to fling a light into the future, so to speak.

(For context, almost none of my grievances were with the other people who worked on the system. In fact, I consider most of them to be my good friends to this very day, and they were the exact people I watched the Silksong release announcement with a mere week ago.)

Did my idea work out? Not really, there was a hack of the system by a fellow team member (which happened to not align with my personal tastes even further), and some occasional house rules proposed by players to fix some of the more glaring issues, but ultimately, nothing that would really appeal to me.

The idea of "fixing" HKRPG never really left me. Over the years, I tried many times to formulate my own changes, or even make everything from scratch, but I would always stumble upon some problem I didn't have an answer ready.

But I think my last attempt is the furthest I've gotten yet.

A leech witchdoctor, a leechdoctor if you will

GLOGllow Knight

During the development of HKRPG I got really into the OSR and soon was consuming blogposts and reading heartbreakers left and right. I don't remember the exact time I stumbled onto GLOG, but soon I began absorbing that content as well.

This heavily informed all my future game design and TTRPG-related decisions, now that I actually knew what I liked in TTRPGs. Funnily enough, HKRPG had already experienced some form of convergent evolution with GLOG: while GLOG had classes consisting of 4 templates, HKRPG had "paths" with 3 "ranks" each,  the main difference being that the maximum number of path ranks a PC could have was 6, with "multiclassing" being encouraged and expected (which seems to be the reverse expectation for GLOG).

Naturally, my attempts to make a Hollow Knight TTRPG myself over time warped to be more and more OSR-esque and GLOG-like, to the point where I consider the latest one to be essentially a honorary GLOGhack. Still, I try to preserve the elements of HKRPG that I found to be important to the experience, like the d6 dice pools and the "build-a-bug" character creation.

While some of the things are still WiP, here are the core rules.

Edit: After some thinking, I decided that simply posting the rules is not that interesting, so I will also try to accompany them with some designer commentary, which will look like this.

Theo the Mantis, one of the first PCs ever made for HKRPG

HKRPG: Bug Bones Edition

Base Stats 
Pick one of the following stat arrays:
[1, 2, 2, 4]    [1, 2, 3, 3]    [2, 2, 2, 3]

Then, assign each of the numbers to a stat: 

• MIGHT: Toughness, strength, and brawn. Roll MIGHT to break doors, move boulders, resist illness, etcetera. MIGHT applies to Hearts, melee attacks and Inventory Slots. 
• GRACE: Agility, coordination, and reflexes. Roll GRACE to jump, roll, tumble, sneak, pick pockets, and perform other delicate tasks. GRACE applies to ranged and melee attacks. 
• CRAFT: Skill, ingenuity, and expertise. Roll CRAFT to forge, mend, cook, pick locks, and perform skilled labor. CRAFT applies to starting Skills and Inventory Slots. 
• SENSE: Perception, intuition, and knowledge. Roll SENSE to search, identify, recall information, keep your cool, and read emotions. SENSE applies to initiative and ranged attacks.

Original HKRPG had Shell and Insight instead of CRAFT and SENSE. 

Shell was the CON equivalent, and you would roll it whenever you'd take damage to lower the damage by the amount of successes (the infamous "soak" roll). If you think "wow, that's a lot of rolling, surely you could replace it with a flat damage reduction instead", you're totally right! Combine this with the fact that high Shell was way too useful in combat, but virtually useless outside of it, and you can see why it was one of the first features on the chopping block.

Insight had a bit of the opposite problem, being the single mental attribute, which meant that almost every single skill roll was done using Insight. I decided to split it into CRAFT and SENSE instead. 

The final attribute spread was heavily influenced by Anne's post on Ability Scores (MIGHT is physical force, GRACE is physical grace, CRAFT is mental attack, SENSE is mental defense) and Dan's Lighthouse post, which mentions the "Tough / Fast / Booksmart / Emotional Intelligence quartet".

Oh yeah, and OF COURSE each attribute must be exactly 5 letters long. For reasons. 

Other Stats

• Hearts: Represent a bug’s vigor and will to live. Bugs start with 6 + MIGHT Hearts. 
• Heart Dice (HD): Represent a bug’s natural healing capabilities. HD are used to heal Hearts. Bugs start with 1 Heart Die.
• Soul Dice (SD): Represents a bug’s spiritual power. SD are used to power Spells and Weapon Arts. Bugs start with 2 Soul Dice.
• Speed: Measured in inches (1 inch is equivalent to 5 feet in games with human-sized creatures). 
• Bugs start with a Speed of 6″. 
• Inventory Slots: Represent the bug’s carrying capacity. Bugs start with 5 + (highest of MIGHT/CRAFT) Slots.

In HKRPG, like in the original game, Soul was used to heal damage. While this wasn't really an issue back then, I decided to make Weapon Arts cost Soul as well (which originally only required Stamina), and now using Soul for healing had to compete with using Soul for cool shit like Arts and Spells.

The less exciting choice being the more useful one doesn't seem like great design to me. Don't you want the players to actually USE their cool abilities? So, I delegated healing to HD instead, which, as a consequence, also gave me a new resource to play around with.

Now, if you didn't notice, this game uses inches instead of the more traditional feet. There's been a lot of discussion in the Hollow Knight community on whether the bugs in the game are supposed to be bug-sized or human-sized, but personally, I don't really care about it that much. In my opinion, while Hollow Knight is somber and beautiful, it can also be quite silly at times. Those are bugs! They call swords "nails"! I think it's fun to imagine that, if you're using a battle mat, the things are happening in 1:1 scale.

How To Roll 
“Roll” means rolling a pool of d6 dice, the number of which is determined by one of the Base Stats and then modified by things like Weapon Quality or Skill ranks. Each die that rolls a 5 or a 6 is counted as a success.

A pool may never be reduced below 1 die.

Advantage and Disadvantage
Advantage means that rolls of 4, 5 and 6 count as successes.
Disadvantage means that only rolls of 6 count as successes.
Instances of Advantage and Disadvantage cancel each other out.

It’s up to the GM to decide if Advantage or Disadvantage would apply to any specific roll.

Advantage and Disadvantage were originally introduced in the hack by another team member. I honestly don't know how we missed them the first time, they're such a useful roll modifier in a system where you could only add or subtract dice from a pool.

In my design philosophy, extra dice represent solid, more permanent bonuses and drawbacks, while Advantage/Disadvantage are much more situational.

You could also argue that, while extra dice are more useful when you don't have a lot of them (going from 2 dice to 3 dice is HUGE, but going from 6 to 7 is closer to diminishing returns), Advantage/Disadvantage are more impactful the more dice there are, with both not being entirely useless on the opposite ends. 

Difficulty
Most actions should require only 1 success, but some especially difficult ones might require 2 or even 3. 
In those cases, the amount of successes is specified in brackets, like MIGHT (2).

Unfortunately, there is a disadvantage that comes with dice pools. Unlike a d20, which maps nicely to percentile odds, the odds in dice pools are never as apparent. One could probably figure out that there is at least 1 success on average in a 3d6 roll, but for multiple successes you'd probably need to bring out Excel.

I might include a probability table in here eventually, as a potential player/GM aid. 

Opposed Rolls
In other cases, when two characters try to compete with each other, they both make a roll, which is called an Opposed Roll.

The one who rolls more successes is the one who beats their opponent. 
If both rolled the same number of successes, it’s a draw and nothing happens.

Group Rolls
If a whole group of bugs needs to perform an action together, every bug in the group makes a roll and the total number of successes rolled is counted.

The action counts as successful if the total number of successes is equal to or higher than the number of participants. Like for non-group rolls, more difficult actions might require more successes.

This is an example of how using a dice pool as the main conflict resolution mechanic could lead to exciting new design space. In my playtests, it was fun to come up with rulings when every single roll comes with a built-in number that stays fairly small.

For example, a player wanted to distract the enemies right before the combat starts. While this clearly wasn't the situation for a proper surprise round, I ended up ruling that the enemy initiative would be lowered by the amount of successes rolled for the distraction attempt.

Skills
Skills represent a bug’s abilities in a certain field. Skills are ranked from 1 to 3, with 1 representing apprentice-level abilities and 3 equaling being an expert in the field. Bugs start with (highest of CRAFT/SENSE) - 1 worth of skill ranks to distribute as they see fit.

Whenever a skill can be applied to a roll, add the number of dice equal to its rank to it.

Tiered Skills were born out of necessity, really. I needed a bonus I could provide for both picking an Average-sized bug and skipping on a Trait. Originally Skills were intended to be binary, but the final approach matches nicely with how Paths are also divided into 3 Ranks. 

Size
Bugs come in many different sizes, all of which affect how they interact with the world. 
Pick your bug’s size:

• Large - you are big and burly, being twice the size of an average bug. You have +3 Hearts.
• Average - you share the size with most bugs, which makes it easier to adapt. You have an extra skill rank. 
• Small - you are small and nimble, being half the size of an average bug. You have +2″ Speed.

I had many questions about how size should be implemented. Should being small/big be a Trait? It could be, but that means that small/big bugs couldn't be as freaky Trait-wise, which doesn't seem right. Should the size just be fluff? I considered that, but it didn't feel "real" to me without any hard mechanical significance. Ultimately, I decided that providing small mechanical benefits maintained a good balance. 

Traits
There are many different species of bugs, all of which have their own unique Traits that define them.

Pick 1 to 3 Traits from the following list for your bug. If you pick less than 3, you gain an extra skill rank for every Trait you skipped.

Three might not seem like a lot, especially if you're coming from HKRPG, where 7 was the limit and some Traits also had Sub-Traits that didn't count towards it. But if you actually take a look at Hollow Knight characters, you'll see that they're actually fairly simple design-wise, especially compared to real-life bugs. I think it's an important part of the feel that most characters don't resemble realistic insectoid monstrosities.   

Example Traits:

• Ancient Blood – Lifeblood courses through your veins. As a major action, you may heal another bug by feeding it your blood. Spend HD and restore [sum] Hearts to it, while taking [sum]/2 (rounded up) damage yourself.
• Burrower – You can burrow through loose earth and other soft materials at half Speed. In addition, you also have 6″ of tremorsense to help you navigate.
• Flight – You can take to the air for up to 10 minutes at the cost of 1 Fatigue. However, if you're disrupted mid-flight, you must make a GRACE roll or fall.
• Iron Guts – You can consume rotten food, and venoms and poisons affect you like alcohol – intoxicating but otherwise harmless.
• Molting – You can painlessly detach your limbs. When you spend HD to heal, you molt, regrowing all missing limbs and leaving a hollow exoskeleton behind.
• Spinneret – As a major action, you can produce 6″ of silk rope or cover a 2×2″ area with sticky webs (difficult terrain) for 1 Fatigue.

 

----------------- 
The full list consists of 36 traits (because the system is d6-only, so it needs to be a d66 table, duh), but this post is getting pretty big already, so they and the rest of the rules will probably require their own posts.

Which means, part 2 coming eventually???