I just put out the final version of my game Ruins & Rogues.
Ruins & Rogues packs everything you need to run a fantasy RPG onto a single sheet of paper. For one-shots, it offers lightning-fast character creation (even faster than Into the Odd!). For campaigns, it offers a simple system for leveling up over 4 to 6 sessions. All you need to play are pencils, paper, and four six-sided dice.
you must get some interesting questions regarding, “you worked on something for 5 years, and its just one page?”
the system does have some interesting choices. I like the -dealing damage- and -receiving damage- systems. auto hit for enemies but not for thee will change how people make decisions!
Congrats on reaching the end of the journey! Will take a look to find out if the new version stands a chance to become my favourite incarnation of your game 
Edit: Weeks later … Sorry for the awry quote of eeldip’s post, which of course I was not referring to. Have now removed the quote.
Do let me know what you think!
Yeah the static damage for NPCs seems to do a much better job than the previous version of making monsters feel consistently threatening. And hopefully it helps to enhance the feeling that if you die, it’s your fault and not the fault of the dice (but the game also trusts the table to decide whether death is deserved).
I can see that. I feel like it makes fighting an HP resource management game, which supports a certain style of dungeon crawl/hex crawl old school play.
(ASIDE: I can never decide if “an HP” or “a HP” is better… both awkward really).
English rules say “an HP” is correct, because H begins with a vowel sound when spoken.
Even if it sounds silly.
I feel bad nitpicking at what you consider the final version, but well, you asked so here are my first impressions. They’re full of personal bias, of course. I might write a hack of your game someday, picking and choosing …
You took the game into a more OSR-ish direction, and I’m more of a storygamery-handwavy GM, so this probably won’t be my favourite incarnation. Prime example: fixed damage values for foes and traps. If I decide those at the table, it will always feel arbitrary, despite the guidelines, especially if they kill/scar a character. I’d rather have a roll, so we can all blame it on the dice.
In the same vein, the retirement rules (a ranking depending on found gold, as per the OSR trope) are not for me. Not keen on attack tags, either. I prefer to do such things through narrative (handwavy … I warned you).
I like the character death/scar rule, except I would not have the whole table vote on the issue. Character death at my table is strictly up to the player of that character. (Edit for clarity: Rules telling the player to remove the character from the game are ok, the specifics, death or retirement, are up to the player.)
The new magic roll is great, definitely a huge improvement and makes mages much stronger with experience. I’m a little sad it does not use Milton dice, but can’t think of an easy alternative.
All that said, the final version is still full of the stuff I’ve always loved about Ruins & Rogues, the character generation tables, spells, Milton dice damage, Advancement. I’ll keep recommending your game, that’s for sure.
Don’t feel bad, I appreciate the feedback and I especially appreciate the encouragement you’ve given me throughout this project. For what it’s worth, you can easily convert the monster damage values to dice rolls by just rolling that many Milton dice instead.
Congratulations! There’s a lot of work in creating a game.
I do have a question and it’s likely I missed something. That math for your resolution system seems to be off.
When you roll 2 six sided dice and add the results together these are your probabilities of success:
4: 91.67%, 5: 83.33%, 6: 72.22%, 7: 58.33%, 8: 41.67%, 9: 27.78%, 10: 16.67%, 11: 8.33%, 12: 2.78%
If you went up in ones from needing a 5 for the easiest chance with skill that would make much more playable opportunities.
It’s kind of pointless rolling when you only have a 2.78% of chance or when your chance is over 90%.
So for Easy difficulty:
Scarred 7+ (58.33% chance), Standard 6+ (72.22% chance), Skilled 5+ (83.33% chance)
For Normal difficulty:
Scarred 8+ (41.67% chance), Standard 7+ (58.33% chancee), Skilled 6+ (72.22% chance)
For Hard:
Scarred 9+ (27.78% chance), Standard 8+ (41.67% chancee), Skilled 7+ (58.33% chance)
Then all players have to remember is the number 6 and it’s plus or minus one.
As I said, I might have missed something. I thought the spells and skills were cool in their simplicity.
It’s not “off,” the odds are very deliberately what they are as presented in the game.
It just struck me that the chance of success and failure at each end were so high and so low. Normally when you design a game you’re shooting for most of your success chances to sit somewhere in that 50 to 75% range with the ideal usually around the 65% mark or a little higher. When you get much lower than 50% players get frustrated because they fail so often. When you get over 80% ish the game can feel too easy.
So hitting that sweet spot with a high percentage of rolls is very important unless there’s another mechanic that deals with it. In PBTA games, for example, most of the time you succeed but with a complication instead of failing.
I completely disagree.
I’m not criticizing, just pointing out a design method that is extremely common. I haven’t played your game and if it has the game experience for players that you’re shooting for that’s great. Congratulations again on the game.