OSR Game: Motley

I had an idea for an OSR game last night, but I suspect some people would really hate it. It might hit that terrible sweet spot of too mechanical for indie fans and too non-violent for old school fans. For now, I'm calling the game Motley.

Imagine a fairly typical dungeon crawl system where hit points represent not just how alive something is, but how able to fight it is. So a specially trained character could reduce hit points with a joke or a distracting magic trick.

Now imagine that in the Equipment section, next to the weapons table and armor table, there are tables for comedy, friendship, and distraction. A character with the right proficiency can use exotic friendship techniques to convince monsters not to fight.

Depending on your setting, you may scrap traditional weapons completely, or you may use them alongside these non-violent techniques. Perhaps your elf dual wields fart jokes and a rapier. Perhaps your dwarf uses long-stemmed roses as a ranged friendship attack and an axe as melee combat attack. Perhaps your orc is a firespinner, who can awe someone right before kicking them in the shins.

I imagine that this system would deserve its own classes, like jester, performer, and bon vivant. Each would grant certain proficiencies and special abilities. I might have to retroactively write fighter, wizard, thief, and cleric classes just to clarify what abilities they have.

Would monsters use combat or would they try to use these abilities, too? Is the dragon trying to kill you or befriend you? What happen if it succeeds? What happens if it befriends half the party? All of these issues would have to be worked out. My default would be to have most monsters trying to harm the PCs, at least until the GM figures out how to run comedy monsters, etc.

What do you think? Do you hate this idea? I'm particularly interested in hearing from OSR fans on this one. What do I need to add for the game to work?

Image by Quinn Dombrowski,Creative Commons