Mini mam

Mini mam is derived from the Mano a Mano Role-Playing System by Benjamin Galbraith and Seth Galbraith. Like Mano a Mano, mini mam is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Please use these rules and modify them as you see fit under the terms of that license. The name "mini mam" comes from "Mini Mano a Mano Role-Playing System."

Players

Usually one player is the "Game Master" who designs an adventure and controls the monsters and dragons while 3 or 4 other players each try to complete the adventure together by controlling a rogue, warrior, wizard or priest character. Other types of games are also possible with this system. For example all of the players could be competing with each other, or teams of players could fight each other instead of working together.

Core Rules

These are the essential rules that at least one player should have more-or-less memorized, so the game can be played without looking at the written rules. Only the most critical and essential rules are included in the Core Rules section.

Characters

Each character has a class from the following list to show what kind of character it is.

Rogue	a sneaky character
Warrior	a physical fighter
Wizard	a magic using character
Priest	a healer character type
Monster	a weaker type of character
Dragon	a more powerful character type

Player's characters should be rogues, warriors, wizards or priests unless the game specifically allows them to play monsters or dragons.

Each character has a level showing how powerful and accomplished they are. A normal hero starts off at Level 1, but nearly harmless characters, like ordinary villagers and unproven adventurers start off at level 0. A character can gain a few levels throughout their life span. To gain each level the character needs years of training, a lot of combat experience, and significantly more powerful and rare magical items to become powerful enough to be on the same level as characters on the next level higher.

Level	Description
0	Nearly harmless, unproven in combat
1	Proven capable of self-defense
2	Can hold his own with most combatants
3	More powerful than most combatants
4	Famously powerful (this level is beyond the reach of most characters)
5	Legendary

Combat & Rolling

When a character tries to do something that might work but might not, like attacking another character, add his level to a six-sided dice roll for his efforts. Add a difficulty number to another six-sided dice roll for everything that stands in his way of his efforts. If the sum of the character's roll is higher than the sum of the opposing roll, then he is successful.

If the character is trying to do something to another character, like attacking them, that character is the target of the effort. If and the target resists (by trying to avoid an attack for example) then the target's level is usually the difficulty number. If a character is a warrior or dragon, add +1 to their level and roll when they attack. The difficulty of attacking a warrior or dragon is their level +1.

Use the following scale for other difficulty modifiers:

Difficulty	Description
0	relatively easy
1	a little tricky
2	challenging
3	very difficult
4	rarely done before
5	only theoretically possible

Each character can do one action (besides defending against attacks) each round, which would usually be an attack. At the beginning of each combat round, each character rolls a 6 sided dice to see who goes first. Starting with the first character, the characters then go in the order their players are seated clockwise.

Characters have three types of health: healthy, injured, and incapacitated. If a healthy character is successfully attacked he becomes injured, and if an injured character is successfully attacked he becomes incapacitated. If an incapacitated character is healed he becomes injured, and if an injured character is healed he becomes healthy. Injured characters have a 1 subtracted from all of their rolls. Incapacitated characters can't do anything at all.

Fire Ball is a special type of attack (that only Wizards and Dragons can do.) If successful, Fire Ball automatically makes any character incapacitated regardless of their previous health.

Classes give characters specific advantages in combat:

  CLASS - ADVANTAGE
  Rogue - +1 to initiative rolls 
Warrior - +1 to attacking and defending rolls in combat 
 Wizard - can use Fire Ball as an action
 Priest - can heal other characters as an action
Monster - has no class advantages
 Dragon - has all of the class advantages of the other classes

Classes give characters general advantages outside of combat:

  CLASS - ADVANTAGE
  Rogue - +1 to do sneaky, underhanded, or illegal deeds 
Warrior - +1 for combat-related preparations 
 Wizard - +1 to understand arcane knowledge  
 Priest - +1 with people skills
Monster - has no class advantages
 Dragon - has all of the class advantages of the other classes

Character Sheet

Most players should not need to have a character sheet. However, for players that have never played an RPG before, or for Game Masters who may have to juggle several characters at once, here is a character sheet that should easily fit on the back of a business card:

Name: ___________________________________
Class: Rog. War. Wiz. Pri. Mon. Dra.
Level:   0   1    2    3    4    5
Health: Healthy  Injured  Incapacitated

Extra Rules

Here is a section for adding extra rules besides the absolutely essential "core rules." For example, rules about special one-use items or variations on Fire Ball might go here.

Fire Ball customization

Wizards can call their "Fire Ball" anything they want, as long as it sounds like some incapacitating spell. (In fact, originally "Fire Ball" was "Frog.") For example, it they call it a "freeze", "zap" or "choke" spell.

Dragons can call their "Fire Ball" anything they want, as long as it sounds like some incapacitating breath weapon. Obvious examples include "acidic vomit" or "tear gas."

Original Mano a Mano

If you would like something more advanced than this which allows for more customized characters and combat options, do check out Mano a Mano.