J8 System - J8ers Gonna J8 Forum

Campaign Tracker

Samadhi — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 16:15:31 +0000

Going to collect some ideas in one place. Feel free to throw in your own :)

Active or Pending

Unnamed Island
Robbie's current Wed

Space.. TOO!!
open-world campaign available for one-shots at player request. Quests varied to include a variety of RPG styles to suit the requesting group.

Sleep Project
available horror/comedy one-shot

Undeveloped

We Shrunk The PCs
this one has come up several times recently in different context. Undeveloped, the basic idea is fighting through the challenges of being an inch tall in your own backyard. I envision this unfolding as a humorous dungeon crawl, and likely only lasting a short time period

Dodgeball - Active
this one would play out like a Beyond the Supernatural or White Wolf Hunter campaign. The PCs would be members of a professional dodgeball team, unexpectedly pulled into the hidden world of the monstrous. Winning the ADAA is clutch, but so is checking out the supernatural and maintaining the mask. Dodge (+Av cap Perc), Duck (stance +Av -speed), Dip (ready action to Catch), Dive (standard action stacking +Av/San), AndDodge! (stacking +Av half-ranks).

Dark Sun - Active
i've just always loved the Dark Sun world and wanted to use it in a campaign (although likely in a heavily reimagined format focusing on the flavor, not the specifics). This would be the closest to a traditional fantasy campaign of ones in my current docket. total new map, limited races of which folks must be one, would present a very good chance for group world building. magic might work weird, not wild, but more caveats than normal. additional dimensional aspects.

"Mob" Suggestion
a couple players insisted that this had come up a couple times, and so therefore added to the list

Future RandWorld - Active
one of the ideas i've been playing with most recently, leaning into events a couple hundred years after the utopia at the end of the WoT books. not heavy on fanfic, just ease of having prebuilt real history for non-readers. would stand out the most for being a Rennaissance time period rather than stone/middle ages. definite limits on the magic system but pretty straightforward ones, elemental caps and specializations, lots of counterspelling and disabling other casters.

DM Discussion

Robbie — Tue, 06 May 2025 14:42:27 +0000

Hello Fellow DM's. I figure this is as good a place as any to talk about development and different tweaks to the system. Without further ado...

I'm looking at adjusting new starting characters ability points to 22 rather than the standard 20 but not allowing any 1's. What I have seen is most people tend to have 2 abilities they ignore when building to "min max" somewhere. Making them be at least normal in all the abilities will remove some unnecessary steps to every players process.

Thoughts?

Obscure Precedents & Design Discussion

Samadhi — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 19:37:13 +0000

Some system basics

The standard progression of math in this system is that any active skill is, at best, +1 per rank. When do we use +1/Rank as opposed to 1dRanks for the default maximum? Usually this is pretty easy. Rolls involving 1d20 can use +1 per Rank as the maximum. Rolls that do NOT use 1d20 (almost always damage and damage reduction) use 1dRanks instead. Again, at a theoretical maximum, there might always be reasons for it to be lower; just as there might be some clearly uncategorizable options that don't fall into a lot of this page's discussion.

Most skills are active skills, but we will define it more formally. An active skill 1) requires an action to use and 2) typically, involves rolling 1d20 (even if the roll is arbitrary/skipped).
This includes, or should include, virtually every offensive ability (magic, punching, weapon-use), every technological skill (radio use, scanner use), every social interactive skill (bluff, intimidate), every item activation (scrolls, clickie-magic-items), and even a lot of things that you typically wouldn't roll 1d20 for (drinking a potion).

Looking at the "drinking a potion" example for a moment, why don't we typically roll a 1d20 for doing so? Not because it doesn't technically require an agility check, but b/c the check is considered so ridiculously easy that we are just assuming success. There may be circumstances where it is not that easy, and we would do the roll. There are a few things that fall under this umbrella (casting buffs in a magic-rich area), but it is the low DC that dictates skipping the d20 roll. There may always be circumstances where this isn't the case (dangling from a cliff under extreme duress, any magic in a low-magic area).

Some skills are legitimately passive.
Stances are perhaps the most common. These all have limitations, and just like only one active skill can be used at a time only one stance can be on at a time. Limitations include negatives to balance the positives (power attack, combat expertise) or extremely specific conditions (two-weapon fighting, mass entropy, mass firebending, mass performing).
Passive, stacking bonuses are the most powerful, and hence the most limited. This can be by them just being half-strength compared to standard skills, or by having a hard cap (typically an attribute, but i would have also allowed your devotion to a color to have worked in the last campaign).

Reactive skills - skills that "trigger" off something else happening - are something that I will not be allowing in the future, with the notable exception of the "Safety" skills. To me, the d20 system is too random to properly reflect reality. However, I have long since caved towards accepting it because of how well loved it is by the people. As such, I look at the "Safety" skills as a realistic reaction to an overly randomized world. Short answer I like them and they are here to stay.
Other reactive skills have been extremely infrequent anyway. So far, I have not ran into one that would be better served by being a ready-action or a stance. This maintains the integrity of the timing of events as well as the validity of how stances operate.
One example, Counterattack. how I did not envision this working more similar to a counterspell is beyond me, but clearly it should. Even if it can be done repeatedly, where a counterspell usually cannot, the fact that you would ready-action to do so makes much more sense than the arbitrary percentile system that we landed on for Druvar&Q. This is most poignant when it comes to someone attacking you before you have even had an action (dnd flat-footed). Note: this is not a power adjustment, as this option is circumstantially better than what Dru&Q used. It is mostly an attempt to remove something entirely arbitrary (ranks=%) and replace it with something that the timing of which makes sense in the system.

Basic Weapons & Armor

Samadhi — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 13:39:22 +0000

My first attempt at this was.... too exhaustive to say the least. Most of you do NOT know the difference between a Dha, Kilig, Kampilan, Mameluke, Khopesh, Falchion, and a Wakizashi. Calling them all variations of "short swords," then, becomes really the better way to handle it. Add slight curves to the blade as thou wilt, they are still doing roughly the same damage per hit. As much as I love the physics of these minute differences, they do not factor on the scale appropriate to an rpg. As such, vastly simplified Weapon table:

1d4 - Improved Unarmed Strike (normal fist 1dmg), extremely light weapons (darts, shuriken, sai), whip, sling, most improvised weapons (hey, that "club" is just a stick!)
1d6 - Daggers, maces, tomahawk, cutlass, staves, javelin, chain whip, kama, nunchaku, foil, sickles, and the infinite variety of short swords
1d8 - Spears, rapier, long or broad swords, picks, spiked mace, flails, bows, war hammer, and battle axe
As the middle range, most 1d8 weapons fit comfortably in 1 hand but are still big enough to be used with both if desired, with some exceptions on both sides.
Any melee weapon wielded in two hands does double the base weapon damage (so 2d6 for a staff, 2d8 for a spear, 2d10 for a lance, 2d12 for a glaive) when wielded as such.
1d10 - Standard pole-arms (most long-hafted weapons), lance, kanabo, long and broad swords (bastard swords, katanas and scimitars), war axe, spiked flail
1d12 - Largest swords (claymore, flamberge), advanced polearms&largest axes (glaive, halberd, pole axe, bardiche, great axe)

Starter Character Templates

Samadhi — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 13:10:41 +0000

From the perspective of eventually molding these into a Player's Handbook, one thing that should probably be included is character templates. That way, if a noob wanders over from another game, they could easily just sit down and start playing a "basic" character class.

Feel free to contribute!! There are no wrong answers, since even barbarians might get built with different emphasis.

Edit:
I did go with a 16/20 for the first build I posted here. I liked keeping it simple here, because its always informative and fun to "add on" additions.
Realistically, I don't see any future campaign starting lower than 20/40. 20 Attribute points is the average of rolling 1d4 per attribute; a true human average. 40 XP allows the incorporation of 20 background points and 20 free points.
Sample backgrounds is another interesting template that could be posted here.

Attributes & Essential Statistics

Samadhi — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 13:04:13 +0000

#	(power)	(senses)	#	Attributes	#	(precision)	(resistance)	#
	Divinity	Intuition		(ethereal)		Guile	Knowledge
	Strength	Perception		(material)		Agility	Constitution

Power attributes tend to apply towards damage and intensity of endeavors. Strength increases the damage of a punch and the distance of a jump. Divinity increases the potency of fireballs and charms alike, the force of one's ability to influence reality.

Senses go directly towards one's ability to notice and interpret reality. Perception encapsulates the physical senses such as sight, hearing, equilibrium. Intuition involves the capacity of feel ethereal events, spirits, time, and electromagnetic fluctuations.

Precision attributes determine the finesse and accuracy of their respective realms. Agility includes both flexibility and dexterity, the fine-tuning of physical control. Guile focuses on mental fluidity, social cunning, and mystical exactness.

Resistance attributes function as defensive mechanisms and endurance to outside change. Constitution measures one's structural make-up and healing ability. Knowledge denotes one's mental integrity and spiritual reliability.

Statistics
Focus - Base is equal to D+K, "ethereal HP"
Vitality - Base is equal to S+C, "HP"
Avoidance - 10+A, this operates both as your AC and as your static reflex save
Sanity - 10+G, this operates as a type of avoidance for mental and spiritual attacks
Initiative - I+P, base bonus to initiative

SIDDIG ( SID ) El Tahir

Yvaud — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 17:27:58 +0000

hes badasssssss

siddig.png