Trollbabe
Trollbabe is an indie role-playing game by Ron Edwards, cofounder of The Forge. It is an outworking of his Narrativist design philosophy. Edwards self-publishes it as a PDF through his Adept Press website.
Trollbabe requires a gamemaster and one or more other players. All players play Trollbabes, large, horned female beings which are somewhere between humans and trolls.
The players each have a single number, the "Trollbabe Number". They must roll a 10-sided die under the number for their trollbabe character to succeed at fighting, over the number for their trollbabe to succeed at magic, and whichever of the two is worse including the number to succeed at social challenges such as talking people into doing something.
Various circumstances give modifiers to the roll. The players also get re-rolls in one of two ways:
- Each player has a series of circumstances, such as "remembered spell" or "unexpected ally", which they can use once per gaming session to get a re-roll.
- They can also get a re-roll through forming relationships with non-player characters they encounter in the course of the adventure.
The GM predetermines "stakes" for each adventure - something that will or will not happen as a result of the trollbabes' actions.
The game also has a concept of "scale", beginning with adventures that affect one or two people and escalating between sessions up to a scale where the trollbabes' actions affect, potentially, all humans and all trolls.