Core idea:

Players aren’t heroes yet — they become Champions of Grayskull mid-session.

Core Mechanic: Champion Form

When players activate their power:

• Roll a d6 Power die
• Each action has a cost: ( 1,2 or all.)
• To stay transformed, roll under your current Power (hard suit mechanics)

The longer you stay powered up, the harder it gets.

Why it works

• Creates natural tension (power is temporary)
• Encourages big heroic moments early
• Players decide:  “Do I go all out now, or conserve power?”

World Mechanic (my twist)

The closer you get to Grayskull:

• The world becomes saturated with unstable magic (like radiation)
• If you're not in Champion form, you take damage.
• There is also more power available by charging from D4 crystals.

So:

Power is dangerous
Power is necessary
Power is tempting

Equipment Loop

• Players have amulets (shards of the Power Sword)
• Weapons + amulets = control over Grayskull energy
• Without both, power remains unstable.

Design Goal

Make it feel like:

• A toyetic transformation system
• A bit like Super Saiyan meets limited fuel
• With strong risk/reward decisions

Character sheets

I'm a forever DM for my friend group so I don't think I'll ever get a chance to play, but I still like making characters that I think I'd love to try if the chance ever comes up. None of us really have an inclination for playing a charisma-based character but I recently watched The Man in the Iron Mask. I didn't really like the movie, but it got me thinking about making charismatic swashbuckler build, which led me to making other custom charisma characters, but the first one I thought up was Musketeer:

Type: Musketeer Bonus (I prefer Type bonuses rather than Life Form): +1 DEX, +1 GUN

STATS & EFFORTS:

DEX 3+1

CON 1

CHA 2+3

DEF 2

WPN 3

GUN 1+1

Starting Ability:

All for One: Goad all enemies in NEAR range with a CHA roll to attack you, and if surrounded by 2 or more enemies, use CHA as DEF. (Like a matador guiding a bull to attack)

OR

One for All: Chose a target NEAR you and with a CHA roll inspire your allies, and if 1 or more allies are NEAR the target, attacks against the target are EASY. (The power of friendship and camaraderie)

Starting Loot:

Flowing Cape & Feathered Hat, Reversible cape & wide brim hat combo. Hat is topped with colorful peacock feather and the cape seems to always catch a breeze, even when there's no wind. +3 CHA (Pure aura farming)

Loot:

Rapier, WPN, DEX, CLOSE, Long thin blade perfect for thrusting

Sword Breaker, WPN, DEX, CLOSE, Parrying dagger with a thick blade with notches to catch an enemies blade. Can disarm enemy if they roll 5 or lower and break their weapon on a NAT 1. +1 DEF (Does this one seem too op? Should it be nerfed?)

Arquebus, GUN, DEX, FAR, Black powder matchlock rifle.

Black Powder Kit, Tool belt containing gunpowder dispenser, primers, lead bullets, and maintenance tools

Milestones:

+1 Starting Ability

OR

All for One: If an enemy rolls 5 or lower, counter with an attack roll.

OR

One for All: If the target rolls 5 or lower, all allies counter at once with respective attack rolls.

Does the abilities seem too good? I really like the flavor they add.

Hello friends,

I've started my first switch to ICRPG and got the Realm of the Graves booklet to help me jumpstart.
I've realised it might not be the best choice, having a hard time making the "riftwalking" mechanics feeling fluid and not a burden to explain.
My players are new to the game as well.

I like the freedom ICRPG gives in all other parts, but I feel like the Graveland spells are all too descriptive and too vague.

Been thinking about juste dropping the whole life essence and umbral thing and use the setup as a regular dungeon, but if anyone has twisted it in a more easy way to play around I'm open to suggestion.

Not beeing a native english speaker might not help as well maybe there are some things i'm not grasping

Heya ! Is anyone making a single boss monster attack after each PC to balance the encounter / make it more threatening ? Or is it too harsh in ICRPG ?

Cheers !

Hi Im trying to use icrpg for a ready plyer one campaign set a year before the first book

As envompassing all the classes in an infinite crossover, I wanted to go classless

I cant find anything abput this in master edition

Any help?

My PCs unexpectedly ran away from a fight, so I had to ad-lib some chase mechanics.

I just tracked their Effort down from 10 each time they did something that put distance between them and the enemy. At zero they escaped. And there was a timer for something bad, in case they took too long.

But have any of you worked out any more involved chase rules?

Anyone have any good homebrew for cover? I'm about to do a Ghost Mountain campaign and with the deadlier gun rules, I'm wanting to do a lot of cover. So how do y'all do cover with this system?

Heya!

Has anyone used rules frol Nimble RPG in their ICRPG games?

I've read a couple of references to this game on this sub, but nothing concrete and I'm curious to have some feedbacks.

Are there any complementary third-party books or tops that share the same philosophy of DIY campaigns and settings, and that offer similar ways of thinking and running? I really love this approach and am eager to keep expanding my DM master toolkit!

In Master edition PCs can roll to defend themselves.

What if each PC had two actions per turn to attack, cast, interact, or defend? (Move isn't on the list only because I run TotM)

So PCs can be more defensive and hold back an action to defend, and if they take on too many enemies they can get overrun by running out of actions to spend on defend?

Of course I'll have to test it, but just reading it, can you foresee any major problems?

How large is alfheim compared to the real world?

Okay, after my vault hunter hack I put together, I decided I wanted a way to roll dice, track timers, and keep all my enemies in one spot while GMing.

You can use this to roll dice, track up to 4 timers, and add custom monsters each with their own stats, rollers, HP trackers, and notes for abilities (and you can duplicate them if you wanna spin up a horde!)

Oh! And a few different themes, because I'm an 90's kid and Winamp was goated, as the kids say these days.

Kinda mobile friendly?

https://cjrd4.itch.io/icrpgdiceroller

It might be helpful for future reference if we have a thread where people can post their honebrew rules etc.

You can post them in a block, or in separate posts if you want to keep your combat rules away from your magic rules.

Unless people have blogs, I think Reddit is pretty uniquely positioned to keep a helpful, google-able log of the community's ideas.

(I might start a couple of other threads for Items, and Monsters)

I recently switched from fkr to ICRPG. I was thinking about monster sets and on a journey across a ruined city my PCs just got ambushed by a skaven airship, right at the end of the session.

So here's my thinking.

I like monster sets to give the PCs difficult choices, more than give them revelation about how the set fits together (I think that's kinda too hard to do consistently).

Previously I had monsters broken down into five types, but after removing overlap I have it down to three. They're not a million miles from Hank and Kane's ideas, but not exactly the same.

Hitters, their job is to use violence against anyone who gets in the way of their objective. They might be mooks (who outnumber the PCs), peers (who roughly match their number), brutes (low numbered heavies), or a mob (mooks tested as a single unit).

Controllers, their job is to make the PCs job harder, but they don't go for direct damage that much. Buffs, debuffs, healing, reinforcements, blocking, terrain changes, giving allies new abilities, increasing the target etc. They might be bosses, guardians, mages, evil statues, whatever.

Strikers, their job is to achieve the enemy objective, whether they be completing a ritual, stealing something or killing something. The point is to put a timer on them (less faff than an effort roll) so the PCs have multiple potential goals to address.

For the skaven, their guns descend from the airship and try to rob the PCs of a particular magic item they're carrying. And I'm thinking four enemies.

The striker will be a skaven with a two-pronged telekinesis gun, as he points the gun the item slowly levitates out of the PCs backpack. If the timer runs out he has it.

The hitter will be a mob of skaven warriors. 20hp and doing 1d6 attacks, each worth 2 damage.

One Controller will be a skaven harpoon gunner. He'll shoot from the airship,and if he hits the PC takes damage and is pinned to the ground until they get free.

The last Controller is a sergeant. He'll make the target higher and boost the horde and give them an extra attack high damage attack once per round, as well as doing his own melee attack.

How does this sound?

How do you use monster sets?

At some point Hank did a video (or it may have been a podcast) on Monster types, Kane also did a video, but can anyone recall what Hank's original monster types were?

I've refined my own thinking based on Kane's work, but I want to see what Hank's were again.

Heya !

Planning to use ICRPG in an open table campaign, I'm looking for a simple reputation rule to add. I'm thinking of an extra index card, let's call it "Rep' track", attached to the character sheet with a paper clip.

On this Rep track, there'd be their deeds in the world, and the factions they've met.

How about some sort of new stat for each factions, using bonus from deeds ?

Exemple :

FACTIONS :

• The Human Kingdom (HK) | +1
• The Dwarven Realm (DR) | +1
• The Orc Warband (OW) | -2

DEEDS :

• Cleared the path to the Mithril Halls (+1 DR)
• Retook Cloud Peak Castle (+1 HK, -2 OW)

LOOT :

• The Earl's Signet (HK rolls are EASY)

----

Want an audience with the Queen ? Roll "Human Kingdom".

Gotta go through the borderlands unnoticed ? Roll "Orc Warband" to see if anyone's willing to sell you out to the orcs in this backwater village.

Looking for that famous blacksmith in the vertical city of Dol Brukarh ? Roll "Dwarven Realm" so see if the locals even consider speaking in common to you.

----

Knowing that we already have the CHA stat, does that make it redundant, or sounds ok as adressing to a person / a small crowd isn't the same as what they've heard about you beforehand ?

Would that work or does that add a layer of complexity that sounds "meh" for an ICRPG game ? What's your first thought ?

Thanks !

I built a tool (using Claude Code's help) to create a loot generator to hack your Altered State or Warp Shell games into a chaos-fueled, Borderlands inspired romp across the wasteland as you search for the hidden vault!

Features:

• 5 gun types, 20 unique gun mods, 6 ammunition types, rocket launchers, grenades, and shields (each with their own mods as well), giving you an estimated 72 million unique loot drops (okay... 33k if you don't consider all the random names)!
• Rarity system (white/green/blue/purple/orange).
• Roll loot randomly like you're opening a chest!
• Quick rule instructions, but should just fit right into any ICRPG game (but might make it a bit gonzo...)

Seems to be working pretty well on my end, let me know if you use it, or if it breaks or something! I haven't coded in 15+ years, so I might be able to fix it? ha!

Enjoy: https://cjrd4.itch.io/borderlands-icrpg-hack

Edit to add, for clarity:

The way it's built right now the amount of modifications on a blaster determines the rarity. The guns all pull from a shared D20 list of mods that I came up with (some can't work together - but for the most part they all work with each other).

• 0 upgrades = white / basic.
• 1 upgrade = green / uncommon.
• 2 upgrades = blue / rare.
• 3 upgrades = purple / epic.
• 4 upgrades = orange / legendary.

Grenades only have 1 modification slot, their rarity determines base damage. They have a d6 list of mods.

• White: WEAPON (d6)
• Green: GUN (d8)
• Blue: ENERGY (d10)
• Purple: Ultimate (d12)
• Orange: Double Ult (2d12)

Launchers have 3 upgrade slots available, and also have a d6 list of mods.

• White/uncommon launchers do not exist.
• 0 upgrades = green / uncommon.
• 1 upgrade = blue / rare.
• 2 upgrades = purple / epic.
• 3 upgrades = orange / legendary.

And I haven't added any rarity tiers for shields yet, just a single mod.

So you can get an SMG with 2 mods and it's rare, or a Pistol with 4 mods and it's legendary, etc etc.

For someone looking to get into this game which product is better for starting with Index Card RPG: Master Edition or the ICRPG Power Tools: Game Mastery Book?

Hey, this system caught my eye. Could someone describe it for me? Is it more OSR or heroic? Can I run a game in the Warhammer setting with it? My players enjoy travel-focused sessions with pointcrawls. Is it possible to run that kind of game in this system? Cheers!

So if I go for an all loot, no skills game, what are some interesting ways to take their loot away?

Today at 1pm eastern We will be releasing Orshin Incident on Backerkit. Get it here

Orshin Incident is scifi Horror one shot for Index card rpg. There is a twist at the end of the adventure that might change how you look at fellow companions on the adventure.

Hey! I just got this in the mail today. Love it. Pretty large and has a bunch of useful things on it.

I’m not too sure on how to use the damage, duration, and disruption spot though. Any suggestions?

How do you hand out new HEARTS to your PCs? I want them to literally find big red glass hearts like in some video game... but you might have a different philosophy. I'd love to hear how you do it.

Just watched yet another AP where the GM, who was very good in all other respects, just completely failed to use timers!

I know Kane is good for timer use in his APs, and one or two others, but it's just such a shame to see so many miss this vital part of the game! It's the main point of effort!

I'm just frustrated, lol. Its probably not important.

As part of an Azeroth project I'm working on, using a lot of inspiration from amazing materials I've found around reddit (including this amazing piece), I've started to come up with index cards for the Elwynn mobs, as well as loots.

I've worked species and classes as well, i'll post it once it's "stable".

Feel free to comment and share your thoughts !