SKEP
A downloadable game
The Beekeepers are quiet, methodical, and mysterious — and always seem to be whispering to themselves. It’s honestly a bit off-putting. There’s no magic in what they do—well, not much magic anyway—but their arcane talents have made the Beekeepers Guild one of the strongest and most feared in The Yard. Nobles may conspire against their control over agriculture, illumination, and sweet cakes, but a beekeeper’s only true enemy is bears. God damn bears.
SKEP is a fantasy beekeeping RPG for solo or group play.
It was inspired by and based on the OSR-style game DURF, but written as a solo-first RPG. The beekeeper class/archetype and the beekeeping rules should be easy to adapt and incorporate into any campaign or setting.
The 20-page document includes a flexible BEEKEEPER archetype, a BEEKEEPING mechanic and hex map generator, a short bestiary, story prompts, oracles, and more.
SKEP was created for the Lone Wolf Solo TTRPG Jam in August 2022. It’s my first RPG and probably still a little rough around the edges. Any constructive criticism or feedback is welcome!
In the spirit of DURF, SKEP is made to be hacked, pulled apart, and built on top of. It is licensed under Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) so you can share and adapt this material for any purpose, as long as you give attribution.
Beekeeper drawing based on a modified drawing by Emiel Boven, released under CC-BY 4. Find his growing library of CC art here.
Download
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Development log
- The Game Jam is over! What's next for Skep?Aug 16, 2022
Comments
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"Just print this convenient reference page 40 times to record the names of your 5,000 starting bees"
So good.
Hi! I just read a instruction of SKEP and I have a few questions: 1. What is HD and ML meaning? 2. How to count time in this game? (because it is mentioned, for example, about WATCH, but nothing else) 3. What does the "BEES" section refer to? This is in the context that we can use these bees? I have not noticed that there is a thread of types of bees anywhere.
I really want to start playing this game, but I need clarifying the rules :) game looks very nice btw! ;)
Hi. Great questions. "BEES" is just the number of bees available vs. the number of bees in a hive. Player starts with 5,000 available bees. If all your bees are in a hive, then you can't use them for combat or other actions.
HD (Hit Dice) and ML (Morale) are both taken from the DURF rules. They relate to combat.
From Durf:
NPCs have an ML (Morale) score and make a Morale Roll when something manages to shock them (they meet more resistance than expected, their leader is killed etc.). To make a morale roll, roll 2d6. If the result is higher than the Morale of the NPCs, they will flee or attempt to parley.
Player characters start with one Hit Die (HD) - a d6. These are rolled when the character is wounded to determine if the wounds are fatal. [When] a creature takes damage, the damage first reduces their Armor points. If no Armor points remain they take the remaining damage as Wounds. Each time a creature receives Wounds they roll their Hit Dice (HD). If the result is less than or equal to the Wounds they have accumulated the creature dies.
Now that the game jam is over, I'm working on a more comprehensive set of rules that will clarify and hopefully streamline some of this. I hope to share that soon! Until then, it's probably best to refer to Durf for combat and more detailed gameplay questions — or use your favorite system. The Beekeeping mechanics should work with most game settings.
Thanks for your interest and kind words!
Thanks a lot for fast answer :) It helped me! Your game is very flexible so I add some my rules to it for my game, but I keep all core rules :D And I think it's really great game! Thank you soooo much for SKEP <3 ;)