The Wyrd System
The Wyrd System is a system to support resolving the outcomes of events. It can handle any type or scale of event; to be quick to interpret as the GM or in solo play; and to allow for the results of rolls to be hidden from players.
You can find a full pdf and plain text version of this on my itch.
The System
At its simplest, the system has the GM rolls a d12 (the Wyrd die) and a player rolls a d8 (a Will die). The difference of the numbers is found. The smaller the difference the more things go the way the player characters want.
When the outcome of an event is uncertain or dramatic use this system. This event might be as small in scale as a single action, or as grand as the outcome of a battle between gods. The event will have at least one willed-for outcome. This will normally be what the characters want to have happen. This willed-for outcome should be clearly established between the GM and the players. When this has been done, roll the dice.
Rolling the Dice
The GM rolls a d12 called the Wyrd Die. This is rolled either in secret or in the open. For each willed-for outcome in the event a player rolls a Will die, a d8. The results of the two dice are compared. The smaller the difference between the dice, the more the willed-for outcome comes to pass.
For each significant character acting upon or influencing that outcome nudge the result on the d8, moving it 1 point towards or away from that on the d12, effectively increasing or decreasing the difference depending upon the support or opposition of the willed-for outcome.
Difference of 0: the willed-for outcome happens…
Difference of 1: …with a downside or complication
Difference of 2: …with a significant complication
Difference of 3: …in such a way that you might wish it hadn’t or that sets up a very significant complication
Difference of 4+: the willed-for outcome does not happen and increasingly its opposite does
Nudging
In an event, the characters can push for their willed-for outcome using their actions, expertise and knowledge. A player can give in-world narrative reasoning for a character’s ability to influence the outcome. If the GM and table consider that to be impactful then allow a nudge of 1 per character. This means moving the result on the Will die (d8) by 1 towards, or away, from the number on the Wyrd die, changing the difference and the outcome of the event.
Nudging does not have to be labelled as such in-play.A player may describe their characters’ actions and the GM can interpret that as a nudge. If players have not voluntarily shown how they influence the event, ask them how, or if, they are able to do so.
The narrative descriptions linked to nudging are valuable in determining outcomes. For example, if a player describes them physically pushing themselves to achieve an outcome and a complication emerges it might involve them damaging their body.
This is the system in full, but if you want to see an example of its application and some thoughts about certain considerations (e.g. about when to nudge, the odds etc., please check out the full version available for free here on my itch page)
Why I love this system
For me this is essentially the perfect dice system. It started life as me editing DnD 5e to try and make actions more simultaneous many years ago, over time - and especially when FKR emerged - it became simpler and simpler until I got this current state.
I use this for just about everything I ever play and have yet to find something that it doesn’t work for. Even just as a GM, a quick drop of the two dice helps me to clarify what I think should be happening in a few seconds.
The thing that keeps me on this system so strongly is that it is fantastic for playing with a Play_Worlds mentality. That is, an approach that sees the players key task as being experiencing the nature of a fictional world in which the influence of “the table-world” (dice, character sheets, cards, moves, etc.) is as limited as possible.
This system does this in a few key ways:
Secret results
Most dice systems use a roll high/roll low model. Typically one can tell at a glance that a 1 is good and a 4/6/8/10/12/20 is good.
Take the following. Player: ‘I want to try and lie to the king about who stole his goat’ GM: ‘OK, roll a d6 and add you presence score.’ Player: ‘I rolled a 1. And I add, um 0.’
In this situation, the entire table is able to do something that is almost impossible in real life: they know instantaneously that a lie has “failed”. That shared table-level knowledge that comes from the dice then dictates the behaviour of the fictional/game world.
In The Wyrd System, if the players want to roll but we (the GM) do not share the result on the d12 then the following happens: Player: ‘I want to try and lie to the king.’ GM:‘OK, roll a will die.’ Player: ‘I got a 3?’ GM: ‘Cool. The king…’
[As an aside, I am not saying this is what happens in all systems, or that what I am doing here is the only “solution”, or that in fact it is really a problem at all.]
Nudging over Modifiers
This system does not have modifiers tied to things in the world. There are no +1 axes, nor +2 to presence. Instead it allows for any type of fictional-world input to have an impact on the outcome of the event. If a player gives a clever description of how they will lie to the king (and the GM decides a roll is still necessary) that may turn into a nudge of 1 or 2, which massively improves the odds of success. If a player draws on some aspect of the shared history of the world, or a part of their back ground, the same may happen.
The players do not need to explicitly call this out, in their natural description of their actions they likely draw on the things in the world. A GM can apply a nudge that makes sense purely from the fictional world or narrative given by the players or which they perceive for themselves.
This system does work really well alongside these modifiers though. I ran a short campaign of 5e a couple of years back and, behind the screen, used this system to help me refine the simple binaries of pass/fail. What I would do is translate the bonuses a player had, or the dice result, to being a substantial nudge that made the outcomes better/worse. I would feel comfortable pairing this system with almost any other number-based mechanic for health etc.
Events over actions
The Wyrd System is a system that is designed to resolve events, not actions. It might be a bit hyperbolic (read, definitely is) but I think that the best thing a GM can do to improve is to think about events instead of actions.
Events are the building blocks of narrative (literally, narrative is pretty much defined by events). What this means is you have a series of objects (characters, things, details) and some actions then together they create an outcome that leads to some kind of change (or continuance) among those things.
Events bring together multiple characters, multiple features, they allow for dynamism and collaboration. Actions can quite limiting to resolve, they tend to include one character doing one thing to one other thing at a time. Once you add in anything like initiative action resolution has a weird impact on the nature of time in a world in which time becomes segmented and people exist in little pocket dimensions that act independently and then re-join together. Events are how we naturally divide time in narrative.
I could rant about this a lot longer, but The Wyrd System wants you to think about events and their outcomes and for me that is a good thing.
This system seems a bit odd because it doesn’t have the normal roll high/low thing of most dice systems. This can make it seems slightly unintuitive, but maybe have a god - dropping a d12 and d8 feels like you are casting ancient bones or lore and magic, and it is a quick easy to use system.
My games on itch; Email:wyrdrpgs@gmail.com; Bluesky:@thewyrdlands.bsky.social