This is the game I’m working on during my pre-week of summer classes. I’m hoping to write up the Principal’s instructions and the monster section over the next couple of weeks. Enjoy!
SWEET VALLEY HELL (DRAFT)
PLAYER’S INSTRUCTIONS
“Oh. My. God. Did you see the dagger that Azazel was carrying last week? Did you know it like, devours souls?”
“No way!”
“Yes way. It was totally rad!”
—
So like, in this game, you play valley gals and guys in this totally sweet alternate universe where a portal to Hell has opened up in the Valley. There are like, really rad monsters, demons, and dead-walkers roaming the ‘burbs and like, magic is a thing. It’s bitchen.
Most of the time, you’ll be hitting up the mall and hanging with your friends, so sosh skills are like way important? But, you’re gonna find out how dangerous it really is living on the edge of Hell, too, so whether you’re into football or cheerleading, rock those abs.
In the game, you’ll see demons – some are friendly, others are, like complete jerks? I mean, what is their problem? Then, there are the monsters – you know, dudes and chicks who are like, not human and stuff, and they range from vamps to werecritters to like, other creepy stuff. Last are the dead-walkers. They’re like zombies or whatever, but most of the time they’re totally grody and used to be like, murderers, so you gotta watch out.
When you start the game, you get like, anywhere from 4 to 8 points to build your character’s skills, depending on how hard the Principal (the like, person running the game?) wants the game to be, or how long after the Hellhole opens they want it to be. You have two skills: Sosh and Fight. Life is simple in the Valley, so don’t bum anybody out by making it complicated. Your skills buy you die sizes in your skills. The first point in a skill buys you a four-sided die. This is like, sooo lower than average. So you can spend another two points to buy up to a six-sided die. Each die up costs two points, so if you wanted to start the game with a six-sided die in Sosh and an eight-sided die in Fight, you’d spend 3 points in Sosh and 5 points (3 for six-sided and 2 to move up to eight-sided) in Fight. This makes you a little tough for fighting and pretty average in social situations.
Your hit points are on your character sheet. There are both Body and Mind hit points. You only get 5 of each unless you get a magic boost.
Each player (like, you guys) starts with these things called Popularity Points (We’ll call them Pops, because yeeah) and duuuh, some of Daddy’s Money! Pops are really cool because you can spend them to increase the size of your dice when you are rolling against the baddies. Daddy’s Money buys you more dice to roll! The dice you buy are equal to the die size that your base die is or to the size that is bought with Pops, so like, if you buy your base die up to a ten-sided die, all of your dice you buy with Daddy’s Money would be ten-sided. Sweet!
Each session of the game, you get a bit of each of these – kind of like, an allowance or something. Along with setting the difficulty of the game with the skill points, the Principal will decide how many Pops and how much of Daddy’s Money you get. Typically you’ll start with two Pops and, since Daddy’s Money only comes in hundreds, like, $400? Each die you add with Daddy’s Money will cost you $100. Cha-ching! If it’s going to be an extremely long game or the Hellhole is going to bite you hard, the Principal might up it a bit. You can always gain more Pops by doing sweet things in game, like risking your life for another player or a bystander, or maybe like, doing something epic. Daddy’s money, though, only comes once a sesh.
Fighting demons, monsters, and dead-walkers is pretty rad. You like, run up to them, or try to trick them, or something like that, and then you grab a die from the table – a like, six-sided one sometimes, or bigger. You can change the size of it and totally add more dice.
You’ll roll the die and the Principal (the like, person running the game?) will roll a die or a couple of dice to represent the monster (find more on that later), and you compare them to see who has the highest numbers, and how many of them. The roller who has the highest number on a die wins, and the loser takes hits equal to how many dice show a number higher than their highest.
So like, if you’re rolling against a vamp, and the Principal lays out like, four dice – all six-sided – based on the vamp’s powers? You put out the same number of dice, using your base die (In this case, for your Fight skill), which you buy up to an eight-sided die, and then some added ones. You both roll. You get a 6, 8, 3, and another 3. The vamp’s results are 4, 5, 3, and 2. You win because you have the highest number – 8. They take 2 hits because you have two dice (6 and 8) higher than their highest number (5). Bam, bam! You kick ass.
Social situations are simpler, because bystanders and non-player characters (like your BFF or your Dad or your Coach) mostly have skills equal or lower than yours. If you’re going up against them, this is normally a time you can be pretty chill, unless it like, means a lot. If you’re in a social situation with a demon or a monster, it rolls like the Fighting scenes, except you use your Sosh skill. Dead-walkers can’t be reasoned with – they’re raw and stupid, just filled with rage.
You’re ready to start the game. The next part of this is for the Principal’s eyes only – like, seriously, dudes, you don’t want to be totally uncool.