The Picard ManeuverI wonder if anyone needs help with anything
Miles O'BrienThere’s a D&D-like game that I used to play that actually has education requirements to read different languages. If your background didn’t give you the trait, you had to learn from someone who knew how to read.
It made for some interesting role-playing when normally intelligent people were playing illiterate characters.
rambling about said gameThere were “basic” and “high” forms of the standard language, but there was a language for most species as well as “lower” speeches that non-sentient beings could use to communicate. Each language except lower one’s had their own written language and associated trait to understand. So if you put all your stats into STR, then you’ll be lucky to read your own language before dying of old age, as your INT modified how easy it was to learn. Learning just entailed being with someone who has the trait and is willing to teach you, you roll and add your modifiers and after a non-specific (up to DM) amount of time, you can put some stat points to learn the trait.
MinnesotaGoddamDiscworldMUD or a TTRPG?
A ttrpg with cards and people usually bring minifigs and map grids, if not DM supplied custom maps.
Did your friend invent it or can I look it up?
It’s called Dragon Storm, and it’s funny you mention friends inventing it because my family does know the only living creator. It’s been an interesting story with all the legal issues and tracking down business partners.
The game is very much modeled after D&D. It has some basic campaigns you can run, and has some general background lore.
The premise is that there’s are weird magic storms that pop up sometimes (Dragon Storms) and make some people (who have dragon blood) turn into magical creatures like werewolves, unicorns, Pegasus, as well as regular animals like wolves and horses. It’s more than those couple, but it’s been quite some time since I played and am having trouble recalling things I didn’t personally have as characters… They later added dragon-kin that are either full-blooded dragons that take humaoid forms, or descendants of dragons that banged humanoids in humanoid form. Those tend to be more powerful.
You use cards and dice to do things and have character sheets to keep track of stats.
I personally think the game is too rigid in its rules and world building, with the card aspect. I’ve had players argue with me over whether I’m allowed to alter stats of things on the cards for the narrative. I’ve had plenty of players meta-game with their memory of the cards. “Rule 3.14” is the Dragon Storm “Rule of Cool”
It was fun to play growing up, though I wish my family had also played D&D.