Homebrewed Rule Systems

Skill Challenges
The skill challenge system used in Almost Heroic was created by The Goddamn DM and inspired by the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons podcast, Critical Hit.

How Does It Work?
The Dungeon Master sets up an appropriate objective for the team based of their current situation. In the show, this has included chase scenes, trying to navigate booby trapped corridors, and facing off against gigantic threats!

The players take turns describing how they will use their skills (Acrobatics, Deception, etc) to try to accomplish the goal by describing the actions they're attempting. They then roll a skill check against a difficulty class that the Dungeon Master has set for the challenge to determine whether they succeed or fail their attempt.

The skill challenge ends when the players have met the number of successes or number of failures set forth by the DM at the beginning of the challenge.

You can read the official rule set here or pick up an official PDF from DMsGuild.

The Fail Scale
In the Almost Heroic podcast, our critical fails have a chance to become a bit more... spectacular.

How Does It Work?
We run a system that has both the players and the Dungeon Master roll a d100 after every critical fail. The results of the d100 roll determines how bad of a fail it was.

01-50: Normal failure. No additional consequences.

51-75: Minor failure. Fumbling a weapon, breaking a tool being used, etc.

76-95: Major failure. Striking an ally, taking a level of Exhaustion, etc.

96-100: Epic failure. Death or other drastic impairment to their attempts.

You can read the official rule set here or pick up an official PDF from DMsGuild.