Twitter has been alight with indignation for the first gauche author who entertains the idea of making Elden Ring themed games or hacks. Ever sensitive to their scorn, I did this anyway. Eldritch Gambit has many parallels to souls-likes despite being an OSR - or OSR adjacent, thanks critics:
But anyway, the easy similarities between the two are that Attributes and gear are the main source of a "build," light and heavy attacks via Gambits, few HP and high lethality, easy restoration of HP, etc. Spells as items, It just begs to be done. To those still seething at my audacity, be relieved that it will benefit me none. Those who are playing Elden Ring now are occupied and not likely to favor a table top version anyway, especially not for a wee unknown game like Eldritch Gambit.
More may be added to this post later as I think of it.
Flasks, Grace, and Resurrection
I'm going to break with nearly everyone modeling a Souls-like right off the bat and say just don't even use these. Eldritch Gambit already has a Flasks-like system with Rallies, which just restore HP in return for an Action. If you really want to model Flasks, give them a limited number of Rallies depending on how many Flasks they have before they rest at a Site of Grace just like in the game. Number and bonuses depend on finding Seeds/Tears as usual. The random part of the Flask/Rally still depends on Armor in Eldritch Gambit, as below.
Resurrecting at Sites of Grace or Bonfires or what-have-you may seem essential, but it is really there to make a video game possible. I do not think it is necessary for a ttrpg. It falls apart badly for groups if one character dies and comes back at a site - do enemies defeated by the rest revive while fighting them? The "official" souls game forced a group resurrect if half the party or so died, but you can see how that also feels kind of awkward in play. Note how in souls games the NPCs do not get Site of Grace or Bonfire resurrects, even if Tarnished/Hollow! Take the hint.
Attributes
These are a fairly intuitive conversion if you are remaking a character. Eldritch Gambit characters start at Level 10, putting them in similar ranges to Elden Ring/Souls characters and advancement by raising attributes is nearly identical.
Elden Ring -> Eldritch Gambit
- Vigor -> Strength/Endurance
- Mind -> Charisma
- Endurance -> Endurance
- Strength -> Strength
- Dexterity -> Dexterity
- Intelligence -> Wisdom
- Faith -> Wisdom
- Arcane -> none
Message Signs
These have a random chance of spawning near anything you are trying to do, making that thing much more difficult. Want to climb a ladder? Too bad, gotta deal with umpteen signs all around it that say "behold ladder" or "need giant but hole." Every time characters attempt a a non-combat Check, add 1d6 to the DF due to intrusive signage.
Hidden traps are obviated entirely by this feature, as they will be festooned with message signs. This forces a game into a common new mindset in some OSR groups where the traps are simply known to the player and they must decide whether to interact.
NPC Dialogue
NPCs that exhaust dialogue the GM prepared (or not) will either fall into an unwakeable magic slumber, teleport away, or just die on the spot! No more answering pesky questions from players.
Armor
Eldritch Gambit assumes your character is not wearing mismatched piecemeal armor like a moron, but Elden Ring clearly does not. A simple way to deal with players paying fashion souls mix and match is to grant 2 AP per class of the armor for the chest piece and 1 for the rest. For every 5 AP the character has on, the set burdens them by one Load.
| Class | Head | Chest |
Arm | Leg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Medium | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Heavy | 3 | 6 | 3 |
3 |
| Ultra | 4 | 8 | 4 | 4 |
So a Tarnished wearing leather armor (5 AP) who puts on a heavy helmet, let's say the Dumbo Bucket of the Uberdong Ass Knights, will have piecemeal armor of 8 - 4 for the bucket helm and 4 from their armor sans normal headgear. This is a Load of 1 either way so there is little drawback until their AP reaches 10, the next armor class.
The lighter armors could benefit from being resistant to certain types of damage like Fire or Bolt. As Magic is a separate type of damage in souls games, this can be added as an Element tag in Eldritch Gambit. This becomes the tag of any previously un-tagged Spell, instead of assuming the damage is physical.
Weapons
Little difference here, reskin some to get the weirder weapons. A heavy/R2 attack is the same as using a Critical, which are intentional in Eldritch Gambit. It is unclear to me what Ashes of War are as objects, but they could be Materia, perhaps little relics or trinkets you could add to the handle. These could grant martial Spells like Berserk, Repel, Vorpal, Smite, Missile, etc. as a fairly close conversion. Expendable items like fire grease are clearly Ephemera.
More to come later, but for now everyone who would be interested in playing Elden Ring as an RPG is probably just playing it as a video game.
Enemies
Model their gear and Templates after their counterparts in the game and assign them a Threat level as usual, if not Named. Named foes are built as characters. Invaders are just hostile named NPCs, which is hardly unusual.
Eldritch Gambit is available on DriveThruRPG (+print!) and Itch.io. It's great but new and basically unknown even compared to other struggling Indy OSR-alikes. If you read it and like it too, help change this.
