Beeswox

A few years ago, a very clever fellow took a fantasy role-playing game based on the Powered by the Apocalypse design philosophy, boiled it down to a few essential pages, and called it World of Dungeons. Many people were inspired to hack those extremely sparse but versatile rules into dozens of cool ultra-light RPGs, creating the World of X family of games. 

Then I came along and collected a bunch of stuff I liked from all those WoX games, shoved them all into one book, and called it Beeswox.

To quote the Introduction:

Beeswox is a minimalist set of rules for tabletop roleplaying, facilitating fast- paced adventure on-the-fly, with only a modicum of preparation needed for a session of play. This book is intended as a succinct general-purpose tool for readers who already have some basic familiarity with roleplaying games. It is designed to support any game premise involving a small party of allies with limited resources striving towards difficult objectives against dynamic resistance. The rules help evoke colorful protagonists, challenging foes, exotic locations, witty banter, tense enigmas, thrilling action, and a bit of tragedy all leading (hopefully) to hard-won victories.

Beeswox is built on two core principles:

✮  Imagination is more fruitfully encouraged by open discussion rather than tightly-curtailed procedures. You and the other players should think and act first “in the fiction.” This also applies to traditional formalities such as whose turn it is to act, the effects of a character’s abilities, how to interpret dice rolls, and even when rolls are required at all.

✮  It’s better to develop the world of the game through play rather than to attempt to define it all at length before the start. Beginning from just a few broad strokes, questions about the setting are addressed as you go, using the answers to fill in finer details and add people, locations, and nuance to grow a unique milieu all your own.

Physical copies of Beeswox are available for $5 plus shipping. Cheap! Contact me here or via trollkeeper@gmail.com to arrange an order, or if you have any other questions.

Bonus Materials!

Along with Beeswox itself, this download includes these useful accessories in PDF form (US Letter sized):

• Additional Buzzes, the design notes that couldn't fit in the book.
• a basic blank character sheet.
• a Honey card template.
• a Sting card template.
• a Cash token template.
• an XP token template.

Print out the Honey Cards on White cardstock, the Sting cards on yellow cardstock, the Cash tokens on green cardstock, the XP tokens on whatever colorcardstock you  like (I prefer a bright blue). All are laid out to be printed double-sided and cut apart. I recommend laminating them before cutting if you can.