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 type of character

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
  0   Weak, 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

Rolls

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, that other character is the target of the effort. 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 the character attacks. The difficulty of attacking a warrior or dragon is that target's level + 1.

Use the following scale for other difficulty modifiers:

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

Combat Rounds

Each character can do one action each round. The action is usually an attack. The characters have their turns to do actions in the order their players are seated clockwise, starting with the player sitting to the left of the Game Master. The rogues and dragons always have their turns before the other characters, then the rest of the characters have their turns to act. (If teams of players are battling each other, the players should be seated so that the members of each team are not grouped together.) If the Game Master's characters successfully sneak up on the other characters, then the Game Master's characters go first instead of the player to his left.

Damage

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 1 subtracted from all of their rolls. Incapacitated characters can't do anything at all.

Fireball is a special type of attack that only wizards and dragons can do. A successful fireball attack makes the target incapacitated regardless of their previous health.

Escaping

A characters may want to flee rather than fight. This can be achieved two ways. First, before the combat round begins, a character can attempt to hide from other characters, using character levels added to the rolls (with an additional +1 in the case of Dragons and Rogues.) If a character successfully hides from the opposing characters, he does not have to participate the following combat rounds.

Second, once a combat round begins, they way a character successfully flees has two parts: first, his player declares that he is trying to escape as his action on his turn. If the character is not successfully attacked before his following turn, he disappears from the combat round on that turn.

Class Advantages

Classes can give characters specific advantages in combat:

  Rogue - always go first in combat rounds, +1 to hide before combat
Warrior - add 1 to attacking and defending rolls 
 Wizard - can use fireball as an action
 Priest - can heal other characters as an action
Monster - no class advantages
 Dragon - all of the class advantages of the other classes

Classes can also give characters advantages outside of combat.

  Rogue - add 1 to rolls involving sneaky, underhanded, or illegal deeds 
Warrior - add 1 to rolls for combat-related preparations 
 Wizard - add 1 to rolls involving arcane knowledge  
 Priest - add 1 to rolls requiring people skills
Monster - no class advantages
 Dragon - 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.

Customization

These rules can be customized to fit specific adventures and settings by changing names. You can create a new class which has the same advantages of one of the existing classes, or a new action which has the same effect as an existing action.

Spells

Wizards can call their "fireball" anything they want, as long as it sounds like some incapacitating spell. (Originally, "fireball" was going to be "frog.") For example, they could call their spell "freeze", "zap" or "choke".

Dragons can call their "fireball" anything they want, as long as it sounds like an incapacitating breath weapon, such as "acidic vomit" or "tear gas."

Creatures

Specific kinds of monsters can be created from the monster class. More powerful types of monsters should have higher levels. For example:

• The Kraken is a giant sea monster. The Kraken is a match for even famous heroes so it would have a level of 3 or 4. The Kraken's advantages are the same as other monsters of the same level.

If a creature has all of the abilities of a rogue, warrior, wizard or priest, or abilities that have the same effect, give them that class.

• A leprechaun is a small, clever creature which is difficult to catch. Leprechauns usually win contests of stealth and guile, so the rogue class would be more appropriate for a leprechaun than the monster class.

Certain creatures have a wide range of abilities like dragons (the combined advantages of all the other classes.) These creatures tend to be rare. They may guard ancient treasures of lead armies of monsters. For example:

• A lich is a powerful undead wizard. In addition to throwing fireballs like a living wizard, the lich can raise fallen allies as undead minions (this works like the priests healing ability.) The undead lich is difficult to fight with physical weapons (so add 1 to it's combat rolls like a warrior.) The lich can move silently (it doesn't need to breath) and can impose it's will on weaker minds, giving it rogue-like abilities.
• A unicorn is one of the most dangerous magical animals. It's horn has healing powers like a priest. This is a major reason people hunt unicorns. But the unicorn is hard to catch, like a rogue. The unicorn is so difficult to deceive that the standard strategy to catch the unicorn requires the use of an innocent girl without guile. The few warriors who have engaged unicorns in physical combat have been easily defeated (add 1 to combat rolls like the warrior class) often dispatched in a single blow (like the wizard's fireball spell.)

Original Mano a Mano

If you would like something more detailed than mini mam which allows for more customized characters and combat options, check out Mano a Mano.