This week in the clubhouse, Stephen is still away in New York, so Ellen is back to help out with a Nice Games Jam! Our prompt: create a JRPG-inspired game in under an hour. But like any good JRPG, it took twice as long to complete as expected...

Ellen's handwritten notes are worth a look! (PDF)

And here's the Wikipedia page for Weevil, which Ellen wanted you to see.

Rules for "Ants of Destiny: Morsels of the Queen"

A two-person pen-and-paper RPG. One player portrays the party of ants, and the other player controls all enemies and narrates the story as the GM.

The Story

Your queen is dying, and for unknown reasons (foreshadowing!) your colony is running out of resources. You, a young worker ant, and your party of misfits must set out from your home to collect the extra food and supplies needed to save your colony, battling foes and overcoming challenges along the way!

The Party

Worker Ant (Player protagonist)

Bite (attack): 2

Carry (inventory): 5

Exo (armor): +0

Ability: "Defend" - Once per encounter, secretly choose (and write down) a party member. The next attack against that character will automatically fail. This remains in effect until an enemy attacks the selected player, or the player uses their ability.

Soldier Ant

Bite (attack): 3

Carry (inventory): 4

Exo (armor): +2

Ability: "Command" - Once per encounter, use this ability to grant an automatic success on a party member's next attack.

Flying Ant

Bite (attack): 1

Carry (inventory): 3

Exo (armor): -1

Ability: "Fly" - Once per encounter, choose an attack target, then exit play for this round. This character cannot be attacked by a non-flying enemy until they return at the start of the next round, when the attack is executed (as long as the target is currently in play).

Weevil (in disguise)

Bite (attack): 1

Carry (inventory): 4

Exo (armor): +4

Ability: "Push" - Once per encounter, you can select an enemy to remove from play until the end of the round. This enemy cannot attack or be attacked.

All party members have 10 hit points (HP).

Party stats

Move: 4

Overworld

The GM prepares a map on a 20x20 grid, with multiple paths, each ending with a resource. This map is kept hidden the player. The player has their own map, which starts out blank. The GM draws new information on this map as the player uncovers it.

Each path on the map has the following information/stats:

Sense threshold (the number the player must roll above to detect its existence)

The shape and length of the path on the map.

The "peril value" representing the number added to random encounter checks (1-3).

The type of resource at the end of the path (food, item, etc. During our playthough, we only used food).

The amount/value of the resource at the end of the path (food: 1-3)

Paths don't all have to start from the origin point of the party. Some can begin in the middle of another paths, but the party can only discover a path if they are within sensing range of the beginning (how near is that? Um, we didn't figure that out).

Overworld turn sequence

Sense check: Player rolls 1d10. This value is compared against the "sense threshold" of each path which is within sensing range of the party. All paths whose sense threshold is equal to or below the value of the roll is "discovered" by the player. For each path whose sensing threshold is below the value of the roll, the player rolls another 1d10. The higher the roll result, the more information is revealed about it (1-3 no info, 4-7 some info, 9-10 all info). The exact information revealed is up to the GMs discretion.