Version 0.2.6 © 2014 Ryan M.M. All rights reserved (MATURE AND IMMATURE CONTENT FOLLOWS) TABLE OF CONTENTS WHAT IS STRAIGHT TO VHS? ​. .​ . 2 Wait, Is This One of Those Nerd Games? ​. ​3​ The Bad Movie Mind-Set ​ .​ . .​ . .​ . 3 HOW TO PLAY ​. .​ . .​ . 4 The Central Mechanic ​ . .​ . .​ . 4 Epic Dice ​. .​ . .​ . 6 Y​our Character, Over Time ​. .​ . .​ . 6 Action Sequences ​. .​ . .​ . 7 Character Actions ​. .​ . .​ . 8 Script Changes ​ . .​ . .​ . 9 CHARACTER CREATION ​. .​ . .​ . 11 Stats ​. .​ . .​ . 11 Health Points . .​ . .​ . 12 Speed . .​ . .​ . 12 Epics and Bloopers ​.​ . .​ . .​ . ​ 1​ 3 Making Characters in 5 Steps ​.​ . .​ . .​ . ​1​ 3 T​ropes ​. .​ . .​ . ​ 1​ 4 P​erks ​. .​ . .​ . ​ 2​ 2 ITEMS ​. .​ . .​ . ​2​ 5 Example Items ​. .​ . .​ . 25 Weapon Workshop ​. .​ . .​ . 27 GRID RULES ​ . .​ . .​ . ​ 2​ 9 DIRECTING 101 ​. .​ . .​ . 30 Creating and Ruling Challenges ​. 30 Dramatic Effects ​ . .​ . .​ . 31 Typical Character Actions ​. ​3​ 2 Setting Up the Movie ​. .​ . .​ . ​ ​3​4 Welcome to Vicker’s Creek! ​. .​ . .​ . ​3​ 5 Example Bad Guys ​. .​ . .​ . 36 Creative Prompts ​. .​ . .​ . 40 CHARACTER SHEET ​. .​ . .​ . 43 Get pumped. WHAT IS STRAIGHT TO VHS? A​ werewolf stalks the streets...but not for much longer, not if former prostitute turned nun Gloria Vendetta has anything to say about it. Never mind her cybernetically enhanced buddy in the precinct who suspects the werewolf is being protected by Yakuza. If only former heavyweight champion Tucker Smash could regain his memories. He was the only one who knew the antidote to lycanism, and now the plague is spreading... You and your friends can now indulge in your own a​sinine ​bitchin’ story with Straight to VHS, an easy-to-learn and fast-paced tabletop RPG inspired by bad movies. You’ll create a character by mixing and matching t​ropes ​and p​erks ​inspired by countless awful movies. Do you wanna be a voodoo master with bionic legs, or maybe a streetwise preacher? Straight to VHS will let you! The Director (or “game master”) will narrate the action and provide challenges and something resembling a plot for the characters to smash and seduce their way through. Players also get opportunities to tweak the Director’s script for their gain and amusement. Straight to VHS is a work in progress, but is already sure-fire fun! “SOUNDS BADASS! WHAT DO I NEED?” -That’s what you say. You’ll need character sheets printed from this rulebook, pencils, some twenty-sided dice and a few friends, including one who will be the Director. That's it! Straight to VHS c​an ​be played with a grid. Grid play instructions are included in the "Grid Rules" section. P​laying Straight to VHS takes at least a few hours, and your group might choose to have an epic, ongoing game that you come back to again and again. Straight to VHS is best with two to five players plus the Director, but any number is fine as long as the Director feels he or she can deal with it. The Director will have to get real familiar with the rules and might want to do some preparation, so be sure to be extra nice to your Director! “I’m a discerning RPG veteran. Why should I play this game in particular?” The “Bad Movie” theme (which permeates the game and character options) is a blank check that says, “Don’t worry. Have fun.” In my experience, players cash that check. This goes double for the Director. The use of d20s raises some eyebrows at first, but the wild swing of the d20 is somewhat tamed by the players earning rerolls called e​pic dice.​ And the differences between attacking and defending d20s are used as the amount of damage dealt, creating quick combat in which rolling a 19 is really almost as exciting as rolling a 20. This is a grounded rules-light game (maybe rules-medium) that gives the players clear gameplay tools and direction. The players aren’t forced to drive the story-telling, but are allowed to get hugely creative if they choose! Wait, Is This One of Those Nerd Games? ​ Yo, flat out, homebro. It’s what us nerds call an RPG (or “role-playing game”), you dig? RPGs share much with their video game counterparts, but brosauce, instead of interacting with a computer and some code, you’re going to be interacting with your friends and the human brain. If you don’t think that’s baller and dope, you’re straight trippin’. In a video game, you’re limited to the sorts of actions and decisions that the game creators coded into the game. Check it, peeps: with Straight to VHS and other RPGs, you’re given a level of freedom that no video game or traditional board game can really replicate. That’s hella fly. Straight to VHS is intended to be a good introduction to the format, thanks to having easy and straightforward game mechanics that define your character and how you interact with the game’s world. In short, yeah it’s nerdy, and it’s also really fun. I mean, it’s, uh, the sickest! It has...typhus or something. The Bad Movie Mind-Set L​et’s imagine a horror movie. Our heroine stands in the woods at the edge of a dark cave. A trail of blood leads into the cave’s mouth. If our heroine has any survival instincts or awareness of her existence in a horror movie, she’s gonna turn around, go home and read a book. That’s great for her, but it’s not very interesting. It might be tempting to make your character’s survival your highest priority, but if you do so, you’ll probably bore yourself. In the end, the goal of Straight to VHS isn’t to “win.” The goal is to share in some belly laughs and come away with a stupid, kick-ass story! Y​ou should strive to move things forward and keep things interesting, even if you know your character isn’t making the smartest decisions. ​In general, act like someone in a horror movie. They aren’t suicidal, but their sense of self-preservation is trumped by the need for an interesting story. Besides, if your character dies, you can just make a shiny new one. Now go. Go explore that spooky cave! Take up the quarterback’s challenge to a drag race! Decide you have to learn more about the aliens! Go skinny dipping in the lake! The audience demands it! Furthermore, t​he Director will reward the players for acting true to their characters and true to the spirit of bad movies ​by awarding something called e​pic dice tokens ​(which we’ll learn about on page 6). Oh! And to really get in the right mind-set, you should watch some fine cinema. May I recommend the following: ​2019: After the Fall of New York, Avalanche Sharks, Big Trouble in Little China*​,​ Dead Heat, Deadly Prey, Eliminators, Future War, Gymkata, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Independence Day, Krull, Latitude Zero, Leprechaun 4, Masters of the Universe, Miami Connection, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Samurai Cop, Sharknado, Star Crash, Thankskilling, Tremors 2, Troll 2, Wolfcop and for more, check out ​r​eddit.com/r/badmovies.​ *A​ctually, you really can’t call this a bad movie. It might be the best movie ever made. HOW TO PLAY Using the options in this document, you’ll create a B movie character with various strengths and weaknesses. The Director narrates the action and provides challenges for you and your fellow players. Hilarity and awesomeness ensues. Don’t worry about memorizing every rule; there will be reminders on your character sheet, and your Director will carry a lot of the weight (sorry, Director!) The game has some rules that can be kinda loose. When there is any doubt about how a rule ought to be interpreted, the Director makes the final call. Anytime you see red text in a grey box like this, it’s information that only the Director really needs to read. Go ahead and skip it if you like so you can get started sooner. There’s also a section towards the end called “Directing 101”, which only demands the attention of the Director. The Central Mechanic W​ hen you want your character to attempt something that has a reasonable chance of failing (like rock climbing or punching someone in the mouth), you roll a twenty-sided die (called a d20). The higher you roll, the better your character does. Your d20 rolls get added to by your character’s most relevant stat + any bonuses and/or penalties. Also, a character that is being attacked rolls a defensive d20 (+ their Defense stat + any bonuses and/or penalties). If the attack roll is higher than the defense roll, the defending character takes damage. The amount of damage they take is the difference between the two rolls. If a character takes too much damage, they die. One more thing: rolling a 20 causes something really good for your character to happen (aka a c​ritical success)​. Rolling a 1 causes something really bad for your character to happen (aka a critical failure)​. ​A c​ritical success ​should cause something big to happen, like landing a three-way or causing the enemy to lose a hand. A c​ritical failure ​should be more than a typical miss; it should be an embarrassing mistake that backfires on the roller, like shooting their own foot or having their pants fall off. You can then apply bonuses, penalties or extra damage accordingly. What if someone rolls a 20 on an attack, but his/her overall attack was still lower than the defensive roll? They didn’t deal any damage, but something big still occurs.