OneDice Pulp: Mini-Review and Custom Character Sheet for a pulp adventure RPG.

There’s a fun little use universal RPG system by Cakebread & Walton called the OneDice system.

The OneDice system

The basic mechanic is simple – you roll a single six-sided die (hence the name), and add the appropriate ability score (Strong, Clever, or Quick), plus any skill levels. The result must beat a particular Target Number set by the GM for the player to succeed.

Players have special Talents that give them abilities, and Stunt Points that they can spend to generate special effects (extra attacks, cool stunts, avoid damage, etc.)

It’s a nice, simple system – good for beginners and well suited for one-shot games.

There are various OneDice books for a number of different genres – Cyberpunk, B-Movies, Urban Fantasy etc. Each book is complete, and contains all the rules you need for that genre, along with notes on adapting various subgenres, called Skins.

OneDice Pulp

My personal favorite OneDice setting is the OneDice Pulp book. It’s designed to replicate 1930s-style pulp magazine adventures – think Doc Savage, Indiana Jones, and the Shadow.

In addition to the basic OneDice rules, it includes the following:

• Chase rules, and a list of 1930s pulp vehicles
• A quick list of some suggested 1930s pulp locations – lost worlds, hidden lairs, etc.
• A list of pulp skins – Horror, Pulp Sci-Fi, and Sword & Sorcery
• Optional Sanity Rules

When I want to run a quick pulp adventure, OneDice Pulp has become my go-to system.

Character Sheet

There’s an official character sheet available, but I thought it was a little bland. I decided to design something a little pulpier. It’s loosely based on the old Justice Inc. character sheets (here’s my fillable version of that one)

It’s two pages; the second page being mostly for the complicated backstories most pulp characters have. The sheet is fillable, and you can import an image into the upper right hand corner of the first page. Both US Letter and A4 sizes are provided.

I’ve added this post to my ever-growing, somewhat unwieldy list of character sheets.

Design Note: The fonts used are the free fonts Adventure, and Snappy Service