It’s Dangerous To Go Alone! Play This (Tunnel Goons Hack)
On my drive to work this morning, I was thinking about the genre of video games that are specifically designed to be two player co-op, and I was wondering how I could translate that genre into TTRPGS…
Now I’ve never actually played It Takes Two but I’ve seen clips of it online and it’s a vibe. Being a 90’s kid, my formative years were fed on tiny adventures: The Borrowers, Toy Story, Stuart Little, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Monster In My Pocket, Small Soldiers and many many more
Im getting off track. Anyways, with some inspiration from Borrowers Dungeon Crawlers I decided to make a Tunnel Goons hack that embodied small-folk working together
Introducing “The Buddy System”
The core mechanic in Tunnel Goons is “2d6 + Relevant Class and Gear”
In JP Coovert’s hack Goons & Ghosts he introduced the novel idea of “1d6 + Team Work” where players can take a group action by contributing one die roll
In The Buddy System, I’m going to combine the two and say player characters use “1d6 + Relevant Class and Gear” with the option of group actions.
To balance it out, I’m going to cut the inventory score in half. Small-folk can carry 4 items comfortably, instead of the normal inventory score of 8.
Honey I Shrunk The Goons!
I’m tempted to cut the health points in half as well, but I think I’m going to steal some inspiration from Wanna Play Right Now? and have a pool of HP that is divided among the party. Let’s go with… 24 HP?
- 2 Players = 12 HP each
- 3 Players = 8 HP each
- 4 Players = 6 HP each
- 5 Players = one 4 HP and four 5 HP
- 6 Players = 4 HP each
- 7 Players = four 3 HP and three 4 HP
- 8 Players = 3 HP each
Ok, one last rule modification: When a dangerous group actions fails, the full damage automatically targets the player who rolled the lowest. Other players may choose to take some or all of the damage, but only if they participated in the failed group action.
“The Buddy System” is my quick and dirty Tunnel Goons hack. I’ll need to sleep on the idea a few nights before deciding if I want to officially write it up and post it to my itch page. I’m leaning less towards The Borrowers or Mausritter, and more towards Toy Story and Small Soldiers for the setting. Idk, let me know what you think!