[Important Update] Introducing SIMPREGNATAR

Hello there! This is Sky, lead editor on the IMPREGNATAR project. After a long period of absence, the creator, Rex, briefly returned to fully hand over the reigns of the project to me. So for any prospective new players, please now message me here on CHYOA instead of Rex for the Discord invite.

Now, I don't have access to a lot of the data he was working with, like encounter tables or monster stats. So after some discussion with the Discord, we decided that the game would need simplifying down in order to still run effectively. I have decided to name this overhaul SIMPREGNATAR, aka SIMPLE IMPREGNATAR, and no, the board of executives did not approve this title, get off my case, I'm the captain now.

Here is the full list of changes that players will now need to be aware of:

• No dedicated GMs

We've run into issues in the past where we would elevate a player to the rank of GM, hand them a set of players to be in charge of, and in turn they would decide that existing was overrated actually and just disappear for a while, leaving that group of players in the wind with no path to progress. To avoid this problem going forward, there are now no dedicated GMs. For every post a player makes, they can nominate another player that they want to GM for them for the next post. If the nominated player refuses or just doesn't respond, then the player can nominate someone else until they find a good match.

There will still be oversight from the editing staff, however, so we may step in to veto a decision a GM makes if it seems unreasonable or unbalances the game.

• No GM posts

I believe that one of the top reasons for GM disappearance was burnout, as for every player they had, they were required to write an entire chapter of prose to respond to each one of them. The alternation of player, GM, player, GM posts also sometimes created situations where the player chapters were nothing more than reactions to the previous GM chapter with no creative input from the player, or conversations between player and NPC were split across chapters like we were somehow hearing each side as if they were on the phone.

In the new system, the player and GM will discuss the actions, dice rolls, outcomes and dialogue all within a simple Discord play-by-post style, and then the player will be responsible for taking everything that happened within that set of posts and turning it into a prose chapter on CHYOA.

• Time & Encounters

Instead of time advancing by 1/4 of a day with every post, to speed up the narrative, every post will now cover a day, from morning to night. You can choose a total of three actions to do within this day, and after rolling them out with the GM as discussed above, you'll describe how they all turn out. Before your day begins, the GM will roll in-between chapters to determine if you face an encounter during the night or in the early morning. If you take the Explore action during the day, this will give you another chance at an encounter later in the day. If you are still conscious by the end of an encounter, then you will be able to go about the rest of your day as normal, but if not, you may lose some or all of your remaining actions for the day.

Any individual actions taken during combat or in dialogue do not count towards your three daily actions.

• Simplified stats

To make things more manageable, player character sheets will be taking a leaf out of IMPREGNATAR | ANARCHY's book and simplifying the character sheets to use fewer stats. You can find the simplified sheet along with an explanation of how it works as a follow-up chapter to this one.

Monster stats are being simplified even moreso, as not only would recreating Rex's original monster manual purely from our imagination be unfeasible, but complex creature stats are another cause of GM burnout. So now there will be a simple bestiary (on the Discord) where each monster will have: a name, a physical description, a Danger stat (from 0 - 10), and one or more noteworthy special Abilities. Each creature will add its Danger stat to any roll it makes.

• Encounter table

As we do not have access to Rex's mechanically complex encounter table, I have created a simple alternative (see the follow-up chapter to this one). It only distinguishes encounters as "weak monster", "strong monster", "treasure" etc. rather than giving a specific creature to encounter, so a lot of discretion is left to the GM in deciding what to throw at the player. If a GM invents a new creature for an encounter, they should add it to the Discord simple bestiary so other GMs can also make use of it.

• Chapter alternation in parties

If a group of players are together in a party, then the players should cycle who is writing each chapter so that everyone gets a chance. However, each post will still be a full day, so it is important to discuss with your party to determine what actions their characters will be taking so that the writer can portray every character's actions, not just their own character. Every character gets their own three actions to take each day, but if they choose to take the Explore action on their own while the other players do other actions, then they may have to face any hostile encounters on their own, and may become separated from the party depending on the outcome of the encounter. The safest option would be to co-ordinate actions so that you all take the Explore action together, which would only generate one encounter but all party members could face it together.

In-between chapters, the GM will still only roll one encounter, regardless of how many characters are in the party.

• Sexual stats & pregnancy

Stats from the original IMPREGNATAR such as libido and fertility were generally underutilised or suboptimal. For SIMP, these stats are gone, and arousal should now be handled through roleplay rather than mechanics. As for pregnancy, there is now a simple formula for conception that everyone will use: flip a coin until you get tails. One child is conceived for every heads.

• Combat

Combat will now be greatly simplified. Each creature will now get one action and one movement they can make per turn. The player will roll a D20 for Initiative and add their QUICKNESS, while all creatures in a scene with the same Danger rating will share one Initiative roll and add their Danger rating. Everyone will then act in Initiative order from highest to lowest.

If a monster attacks a PC, it will roll D20 + Danger, and the PC will defend with D20 + QUICKNESS. If a PC attacks a monster, they will roll D20 + (STRENGTH for melee, PRECISION for ranged or finesse melee, KNOWLEDGE for spells) and the monster will defend with D20 + Danger. If the attacker's outcome matches or exceeds the defender's outcome, then the attack is a success, otherwise it's a miss.

All damage will roll 1D4 + Danger rating for creatures, and 1D4 + attack TRAIT + weapon modifier for players (damaging spells may roll (Z+1)D4 + ZxKNOWLEDGE, where Z is the level of the spell). Creatures have ENERGY equal to 5 + 2x their Danger rating. If a defending PC has any points of ARMOUR, flip a coin for each point of ARMOUR. For every Heads, reduce the damage by 1 to a minimum of 0.