Mini mam

These rules are derived from Mano a Mano, and are therefore copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license by Benjamin Galbraith and Seth Galbraith. Please use these rules and modify them as you see fit under the terms of that license. "Mini mam" is a phrase we made up that means "Mini Mano a Mano Role Playing System."

Types of Players

The types of players depend on the type of game. Usually one player is called a "Game Master", who designs an adventure using monsters and dragons 3 or 4 other players to try to get through.

Core Rules

These are the essential rules that must be more-or-less memorized by one player in order to play the game without any written instructions. Only the most critical and essential rules are included in the Core Rules section.

Characters

Each character has a "class" to show what kind of character it is. The character classes are:

  CLASS - DESCRIPTION
  Rogue - a sneaky character type
Warrior - a combat character type
 Wizard - a magic character type
 Priest - a healing character type
Monster - is weaker than the other character classes, and should only be used as the game allows.
 Dragon - is more powerful than the other character classes, and can only be used as the game allows.

Each character has a "level" to show how powerful and accomplished they are. A normal hero starts off at Level 1, but harmless characters start off at level 0. It is possible to gain a few levels throughout the life span of the character, if the character actually becomes more powerful enough to be on the same level as characters on the next level higher. Usually this requires years of training, a lot of combat experience, and the acquisition significantly more powerful and rare magical items - for each individual level: levels are only gained one at a time.

LEVEL - DESCRIPTION
    0 - Harmless (has injured or incapacitated other characters less than 10 times)
    1 - Capable of self-defense (has injured or incapacitated other characters less than 100 times)
    2 - Can hold his own with most combatants (has injured or incapacitated other characters less than 1,000 times)
    3 - More powerful than most combatants (has injured or incapacitated other characters less than 10,000 times)
    4 - Famously Powerful (this level is beyond the reach of most characters)
    5 - Legendarily Powerful (has injured or incapacitated other characters over 100,000 times)

Combat & Rolling

When a character does something that may-or-may not work (like attacking another character,) add his level to a six-sided dice roll for his efforts. Add a difficulty modifier (including the target's level) to another six-sided dice roll for those things that stand in his way of success. If the sum of the character's roll is higher than the sum of the oppositions role, then he is successful.

If the character is attacking another character, use that other character's level (+1 if that other character is a Warrior) as the difficulty modifier. Otherwise here is the difficulty modifier scale:

DIFFICULTY MODIFIER - 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

Character Sheet

Most players should not need to have a character sheet. However, for players that have never played an RPG before, 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.

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.