You Don’t Need a Game System Before You Play: The Calvinball Experiment
In the final three months of 2024, I ran something of a thought experiment disguised as a game among a handful of player in my Discord server. It was inspired, as these things so often are, by a Facebook screenshot that somehow made its way to me, adrift on the rubbish-strewn seas of social media (I don’t quite recall which). Rather than potentially dox this person who I do not know, I will transcribe their post for your edification and titillation:
“For my weekly UVG game, we’re not using a rulebook. Instead we have a homebrew rules deck that we write/import as we go. When we need a rule, we just have a quick chat about what the gameplay should feel like. I draft rules on index cards and add them to our table’s ‘homebrew deck’. The first time a character was dropped to 0hp, we paused the game and I asked ‘What happens next? How lethal should this be? Is the character dead, or injured, or what?’ We then had an honest talk about what feels fun to everybody and imported rules that supported those vibes. Anybody’s allowed to suggest new rules. If somebody says ‘Let’s try the flashback system from Blades in the Dark’, we just write up a tiny version of it and add it to the deck. And if it’s broken? We figure that out in-play and adjust on the fly. Right now, we’re using a mashup of SEACAT, D&D, Knave, & Mork Borg.”
If you are a gaming sicko like me, you are thinking something along the lines of “hell yeah”, “fuck yes”, or even “this rules”. Immediately upon seeing this post, like some Disney villain or King David in the Book of Samuel, I thought, “I must have it for myself!” However, I wanted to go even further. It seemed the original poster at least had a baseline of proto-D&D in mind (see both the mention of hp, and the images that describe rolling d20s and adding modifiers, crits and fumbles, etc.), I wanted to start with a true blank slate.
Arguably, what we ended up with was as much story game as it was OSR-inspired. This was curious because the majority of my players were nominally OSR types, although they were all more just fellow gaming sickos, familiar with a wide variety of tabletop games. Below I will present the rules in the order they arrived (and no rule was made until we felt it was needed, thus we went several sessions before a core resolution mechanic was designed), rather than in order of importance. I will then write a bit of analysis of the rules and then just a brief sketching of what kind of fiction produced these rules.
I think I could run this experiment 100 times and never come up with the same rules twice. You should run something like this for your own group of gaming sickos and see what you all come up with. It was quite fun.
The “Strange Bedfellows” Rules, in Order of Appearance
Please note that the following is a genuine artifact of play, pulled directly from the google doc that was shared between GM and players. I typically left it to the players to memorialize the conclusions of our rule discussions.
Rule 0. Calvinball
When a rule is needed, everyone at the table quickly discusses what the gameplay should feel like and what rule(s) would support that. If a majority of players agree on the rule (voting is necessary only if there is dissent), the rule is added and recorded so it may be followed going forward. Anyone is allowed to suggest new rules. Rules may be adjusted during play if needed and agreed to by the group.
Rule 1. Pact Magic
Whenever you want to cast a spell, you must make a deal with some plant, animal, spirit, ghost, or demon. "I want to be tall like this tree. Tree, make me tall like you and I will chase the squirrels out of you." If you renege on your promise, you suffer a consequence (e.g., rapid aging).
Consequences can't be undone by the sufferer of the consequence. Someone else must cast the spell to undo the consequence.
You cannot make a pact with another human. Unless they are dead (c.f. Ghosts).
Making the pact is played out through roleplaying.
If you want to cast a spell regularly, you can form a contract with a being. Longterm services for frequent spells.
Animals and nature beings can do pact magics with houses and that type of constructions, but they have to have had people born or die in them to imbue them with spirits.
Rule 2. Wealth Bands
Each band has a usage die associated. Spending on something major for that wealth band requires a roll.
Rule 3. Deception
Die chain -> d12 d10 d8 d6 d4
NPC has skepticism die, PC has reputation score. If skepticism die rolls higher once, the NPC is skeptical, if twice they just don’t believe
Roll the skepticism die when PC lies.
Most NPCs start with d8, but may depend on NPC’s base attitude as well
Rule 3.5 Reputation
Scale 1-12, starts at 4
Rule 5 - Die of Subterranean Moods
When exploring anywhere underground, roll 1d6 to determine mood:
Wet
Creepy
Steamy
Brooding
Old
Haunting
Rule 6 - Rumors
Rumor table, some are more pertinent than others. GM rolls 50/50 partially true or true
Rule 7 - Travel Procedure
During the day, scene based
During the night, random encounters
Weather - current weather in Tarrytown NY
Rule 8 - TIME KEEPING
Loosie Goosie
Rule 9 - Do I Know You?
Players can choose to say they don't know an encountered character and take a token, which may be redeemed later (stronger move? Moves???)
Rule 10 - General Resolution Mechanic “DANGER COINS”
Flip all your coins. You start with one. If they all come up heads, you succeed. For each success, gain another coin. For each check going forward, flip all your coins. You can use tokens to gain an automatic success. The GM can also present a tough choice for a token
There are no saves, only active rolls.
Rule 11 - Fey Rules
Fey creatures cannot enter a house uninvited. Charms sometimes work against fey
Rule 12 - Game Master
Game master is called the “Die Rector”
Principle: fucks around, finds out
When in doubt, how does pokemon handle it?
Rule 13 - THIEVERY
For feats of thievery, roll a number of d6 = 1 + tokens spent. 1-3 = Failure, 4-5 = Mixed Success, 6 = Full Success, Double Sixes = Critical Success.
You may spend a token after your initial roll to roll another d6. If you do this, you can't get a critical success.
Rule 14 - Damage Coins
When a character takes damage, they gain a DAMAGE COIN. You flip these coins like the general resolution mechanic coins, except you do not get rid of them after you fail. There is no Damage Coin Maximum.
To get rid of Damage Coins, you must play a different character for a session.
Rule 14.5 - Retirement / Death
At any time a character can Retire, giving their Damage Coins to the rest of the party as Tokens divided roughly evenly. Describe how your character retires and what they do ~ If your character’s Damage Coins at retirement are higher than their height in Feet, they instead die. Describe their death.
Rule 14.75 - NPC Damage
Similar to FitD, you fill up injury boxes. 3 non-fatal wounds are fully fatal. 1 fatal wound is fully fatal.
Rule 15 - Bed Resolution Mechanic
The only way to get rid of Damage Coins. Each person in the bed rolls a die. The better the bed, the larger the dice (d4-sleeping bag, d6-rickety twin, d20-california queen). When people match dice, they roll out of bed. If there are triples, the bed breaks, no one happy. [See ORA - B if a character is sleeping in the pocket of a character in the bed]
Not sleeping on a bed incurs 1 danger coin.
ORA - B - Bed Squishing Rules for Pocket Sleeping
If a character is sleeping in the pocket of another character during Bed Resolution, only the character whose pocket is being slept in must roll a dice between the two. However, if that character falls out of bed (or the bed is destroyed), the character in the pocket is squished, instantly killing them.
Rule 16 - Crafting Mechanic
Play flip cup to determine whether or not the crafted item breaks. [IMPORTANT: See ORA - A for Optional Coffin Flop Mechanics]
ORA - A - Coffin Flop Mechanics
When Crafting a Coffin there is always the option to attempt a “Coffin Flop” [Where-in during the service, the body “flops” out of the coffin] - This requires multiple people to help - When doing the Flip Cup Crafting procedure a total failure result in no Coffin Flop, a mixed success (some successful flips, some unsuccessful) results in a clothed Coffin Flop, and a full success results in a nude Coffin Flop, where the body flops out nude.
Rule 17 - Alcohol
Can temporarily negate a number of damage coins, but also negate an equivalent number of d6 thievery dice. Whenever you sleep in a bed, that's when the alcohol wears off.
Rule 18 - Cumulative Inventory
Think of 12 days of Christmas "5 golden eggs, 4 calling birds, etc". You can carry up to 12 items, but you have to have that many of that item. E.g.: You cannot have 1 mysterious key and 1 fireplace poker and 1 soot shovel, but can have 1 mysterious key and 2 "fireplace instruments". As you use and lose items, you may creatively reshuffle your semantic definitions of items to lump them together as necessary.
Putting a pin in:
Reputation rules: truthfulness, whose reputation is at stake
All snowmen are criminals
Metacommentary
While Rule 0 (Calvinball) was the most important rule, Rule 1 (Pact Magic) was a central rule, inspired by one of the first characters (a “stilt-wizard” child who accidentally turned himself into an old man), that generated much of the worldbuilding for the entire campaign. Other early rules like Rules 2 (Wealth Bands), 3 (Deception), 3.5 (Reputation), and 6 (Rumors) rarely came up. There were some like Rule 5 (Die of Subterranean Moods) that came up more often than you would expect, but mostly because it was such a silly rule that people evoked it so they could declare this or that place to be either wet or creepy.
The rules started building on each other with the discovery of Rule 10 (Danger Coins), which became a sort of core resolution mechanic that tied into many of the other rules, which provided additional tokens (automatic success) or coins (made success more difficult). Rules 14 (Damage Coins), 14.5 (Retirement/Death), 15 (Bed Resolution Mechanic), and 17 (Alcohol) constituted the entire system for gaining damage (which made success on the core resolution more difficult), choosing to die or retire because you’ve accumulated so much damage that resolution has become untenable, resting in a bed to get rid of the damage, or drinking to make you ignore your damage but at the cost of being worse at thievery skills. Rule 13 (Thievery) was an alternate resolution mechanic specifically for any thief-related task, like climbing walls or picking pockets, but this too interacted with the core resolution mechanic by way of drawing on the same pool of tokens. I actually think this whole machinery was solid enough that someone could dust off the more obviously silly parts and build a whole game around it.
The sessions all took place during the prolonged holiday season that was the October to December stretch, but only one of the rules explicitly ties into this. It was our last rule, invented on the final two sessions (played the week of Christmas), when the game took a more dungeon-crawly vibe: Rule 18 (Cumulative Inventory). Inspired by the 12 days of Christmas song, you had 12 inventory slots, but each slot was reserved for a group of items equal in number to those slots. So if you had a dozen eggs in your 12th slot and threw one, you’d need to move it to your 11th slot, potentially having to choose between that and what was already there (or getting rid of some of your extras of either type). The least diegetic inventory management system I’ve ever seen, but I do think it is probably a genuinely new idea.
Okay, But What Was This Game Even About?
The first few sessions could be described as either “cozy” or just a farcical play, almost entirely taking place in the boarding house of Young Goodie Goldsmith, the false widow of Handsome John who has gone away for three years as a merchant marine. Goodie’s 12-year-old nephew, the erstwhile Chullteigh the Stiltwizard, arrives after heaving turned himself into an 80-year-old man by his ill-use of magic. There are several boarders at the house (and more showing up all the time), and several of the townsfolk stop by as Goodie both prepares for the upcoming Applebob holiday and to also check on the status of her nephew, presumed missing, or on the status of Braun B. Goul, lumberjack and son of the wealthy John Seymore Butterscotch Goul, Esq., who was found dead in Goodie’s cellar, murdered by none other than Chullteigh. Lots of drama, but the tone was consistently comedic and farcical.
It was on the day of Applebob that Chullteigh goes missing and Goodie and several boarders go into the woods north of town to find him that things start getting a bit more weird. Goodie knows many wards against spirits and fey, but they still come across a priest cursed to be only two-thumbs tall, a squirrel turned into a boy with his still-a-squirrel cousin, a apple-shaped unluck spirit, a gang of talking snowmen, and other strange and unusual creatures.
While in a rectory next to a cemetery in the woods, the cast of characters sleeps for the night, leading to the silliest rule but the one that ended up naming the system “Strange Bedfellows” with the subheading “System Mattress”. They asked to rest in the rectory, but there was only a single bed and all manner of PCs and NPCs. The players (with myself and other viewers from my discord server egging them on, naturally) devised a mechanic for resting where the more people try to sleep in a single bed, the more likely some will fall out of the bed and the more likely that the bed itself will break. Well, they were so crammed into the bed that break it did. But remember the two-thumb tall priest? He was sleeping in the shirt pocket of another priest character. What happens? Rule ORA-B (Bed Squishing Rules for Pocket Sleeping) was added, which ruled that the tiny priest was killed. The squirrel character inherited his tiny musket.
The mini-campaign ended with a mansion crawl in which the characters covered themselves in flour so that they might A Christmas Carol the rich occupant (the aforementioned J.S.B. Goul, Esq.) into giving them his treasures. They found actual ghosts and enlisted them in the scheme. Then they remembered they could use ghosts to cast spells, and turned themselves into actual ghosts, just temporarily. However, Mr. Goul was a powerful necromancer who could swallow ghosts. It all ended climatically with the negotiating of a last will and testament and, as all the best campaigns end, with the signing of legal documents.
