Help for my little brother

[Da Pwnzlord]

My brother is making up a game for his 9th grade archaeology class. This will be graded. It's for the teacher to play, someone who (presumably) never played any RPGs in her life before. Please respond with helpful tips.

Also, if anyone knows any nifty ways to post Appleworks documents while preserving the nifty setup, that would be nice too.



Tomb Robbers
the roleplaying game.

What is a roleplaying game, you may ask. Don’t worry, roleplaying is not only fun, it is also easy to learn. This book will give you all the rules and info you need to begin play, so you’re already halfway to playing the game. Roleplaying games are basically as follows: You and your friends take on the role of a hero at the center of a story. You get to pick what your hero, or Player Character (PC), will do, what they say, how they fight, and what they look like. You and your friends will get to shape the actions.
This concept may seem very chaotic. How is the story told? Who decides what happens? What if you don’t all agree? There are two ways that the proplems have been dealt with.
First, this rule book will give you the rules to detirmine success of failure.Second, and probably more important, is the Game Master (GM). The GM is the person in charge of running the game. He is the referee and the lead storyteller. GMs don’t play the game the same way PCs do, instead, they present the storys and situations, describes the world around the PCs, plays other characters, and adjudicates the rules. The GM of any game should be fair-minded, well spoken, and imaginative. The GM is also like a referee; Impartial to all the players, and also gives the final word on disagreements. If you are the GM, keep in mind that your goal is not to “win”, your goal is to chalenge the PCs with interesting and exiting adventures.

Creating your Character:
The first step in any roleplaying game is to create your character. It is a good idea to have a good mental image of your character. What does she look like? How good at fighting is she? Why is she robbing tombs? What will she do with the money? It also helps to think about where you character came from and what sort of backround she has.

Place of origin: Now choose what part Egypt your character is from.
Upper Egypt: You gain +1 strength
Lower Egypt: You gain +1 inteligence
Foreign: You gain +1 agility

Ability scores: You start off with 10 points to spread over 3 ability scores. The minimum number of points in any score is 1, and the maximum is 6. Then add the modifiers from above in the place of origin section. The ability scores are as follows: Strength (str), Intelligence (int), and Agility (agi)
A Nubian tomb raider’s abilities may look like this:
Str: 5, Int: 2, Agi: 4
or
Str: 3, Int: 4, Agi: 4
or
Str: 4, Int: 4, Agi: 3.

Skills: Your character starts off with training in 3 skills. If you do not have training in a skill, you may still attempt it, but you will have to roll two 6 sided dice instead of one.
The skills are listed below
______________________________________________
Perception (int), Climb (str), Sneak (agi), Trap Finding (int), Engineering (int), Intimidate (str), Swim (agi), Jump (agi), Charm (int), Ciphers (int), Navigation (int), Search (int), Control Animal
______________________________________________

Items: Each character starts off with 20 copper pieces. you can use it to buy whatever you want from the tables below

Weapons






Armor





Gear







Hit points: All characters start our with 10 hit points. Characters lose hit points whenever they take damage from combat, traps, or falling. Armor will reduce damage taken by the amount stated next to it.


Playing the Game
Now that you have a character, you can begin playing Tomb Raiders. This section will tell you how to do just that.
In Tomb Raiders, you will need to draw on your skills in order to survive, whether you’re scaling a cliff, navigating your way though a maze of tunnels, sneaking past gaurds, or running from gaurds. Success and failure in this game can be determined by one simple rule. When attempting an action, roll one 6 sided die (1d6). Then look on the chart below to determine what ability you are testing. If you rolled above the ability, you fail. If you roll below the ability, you succeed. Keep in mind, that if you are testing a skill you don’t have, roll two 6 sided dice (2d6) instead.
Check Related Ability Description













































Combat: While most tomb robbers prefer steath to combat, there may come a time when you need to defend yourself. Attacking someone is works the same way as a skill check based off of Strength. If you succeed on the check, you deal damage equal to your weapon’s listed damage, plus your Strength. Armor reduces damage taken by the amount listed next to it.
If your opponent succeeds on his attack roll, you could choose to dodge the attack. To do so, simply make an Agility test. If you fail, you take damage as normal. If you succeed, you take no damage. You may only dodge one attack per round

Taking Turns: When not in a life threatening situation, PCs can do whatever they want in any order. When in combat however, everyone must take turns. At the begining of combat, roll Initiative. To roll for Initiative, roll 1d6 and add your Agility. Everyone takes turns in order of highest to lowest. Once everyone has taken their turn, the round starts over.

[Swordgleam]

I'd go over it again while trying to hold back your RPG assumptions. All gamers know what "hit points" are, but the term isn't immediately obvious to someone who's never seen it before. Why not call that Health or Wounds or Toughness?

Aside from checking for that kind of thing, it looks pretty good.

[Drolyt]

I agree with swordgleam, those terms are quite mysterious if you are new to this kind of thing, though many will be familiar to anyone who has played video games. If you prefer you could use them but add explanations every time you use a new term and make a glossary and an index for reference.

[FlamingKobold]

I looked through it, and I didn't see any die rolling that isn't a d6, so why not just say "roll a die" and "roll two dice." It's a lot more simplistic.

[Ihala]

If it is graded, run that through a spellchecker, I saw a few errors just glancing over it, gaurd for instance. I would try and keep it as simple as possible, and as such, unless place of origin is meant to illustrate that he knows that southern Egypt was more militaristic and northern Egypt was more philosophical and focused on culture, I would scrap it, though as it is only a small change, keeping it is probably fine.

Explain the connection between the 3 core stats and skills better. I understood it, but it does not explicitly explain how it works, though with the omitted chart included it may be perfectly clear. The way I read it though you are rolling against your ability when you want to do something, and skills are actually separate from the die roll, which is not what you intend.

In Tomb Raiders, you will need to draw on your skills in order to survive, whether you’re scaling a cliff, navigating your way though a maze of tunnels, sneaking past guards, or running from guards. Success and failure in this game can be determined by one simple rule. When attempting an action, determine what skill is used and roll one 6 sided die (1d6). Then look on the chart below to determine what ability is associated with the skill. If you rolled above the ability, you fail. If you roll below the ability, you succeed. Keep in mind, that if you are testing a skill you don’t have, roll two 6 sided dice (2d6) instead.


Also I would recommend just applying a penalty to the die roll rather than changing the number of dice. Using my mother as an example, anytime the rules called for something to change what she has to do, she would get confused on why things have changed, admitably though she doesn't try to remember; if she did the same thing as usual, but afterward a modifier is applied she is more receptive. Anecdotal suggestion, so take it as you wish.