Project: Grunt

War Drums by Sidharth Chaturvedi

You are an Orc. A raging death-machine of bone and blood. Nothing matters to you more than the thrill of battle, and the honor you bring to The Warband. 

Make Your Orc

Level 0. You are a Grunt. You have no name.

Stats - Roll 3d6 for each. Bonus equals lowest die. Defense equals Bonus+10

Strong: Brute strength. Used for Fighting and Forcing. Add to Attack roll with melee weapons.  

Sharp: Skills and cunning. Used for Sneaking and Thinking. Add to Attack roll with ranged weapons.

Ego: The right attitude. Used for Talking and Dark Magic.

You have 5 HP. 

Roll For Your Weapon on the Junk Weapon Table.

Advancement - To advance to level 1, you have to get your first kill. Beyond that, you require 1000 xp per level. Warband XP is shared and tracked by razing buildings or settlements, and stolen wealth. 50 XP for low-risk accomplishments like villages, 100 XP for moderate-risk accomplishments like settlements, and 200 XP for high-risk accomplishments like castles and wizard towers.

Note - Record what you did the first time you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll. This is your surname.

Level 1. The Grunt earned his name. 
Choose or Roll For Your Name

Stats - This level, and every level you gain hereafter, add 1 point to a stat Bonus of your choice.

HP - This level, and every level you gain hereafter, roll 1d6+Strong, and add it to your HP total.

Choose Your War-Path

Even Levels: Choose Kill-Path (Weapon based abilities / features)
Odd Levels: Choose from your War-Path (Archetypal abilities / features)

Inventory

You can hold a number of Weapons up to your Strong bonus. 

You can hold a number of Trophies up to your Ego bonus. 

You can hold a number of Tools up to your Sharp bonus. 

You are a predator and a carnivore. You hunt down and eat meat, wherever it comes from. You don't carry it with you. 

Aaaand that's all I've got so far. This is a seed of an idea for an rpg I've been bouncing around in my head for a few weeks. Basing it off of the Knave RPG system, I wanted to make a simple and straightforward rpg experience based on being a tough-as-nails murder machine known as an Orc.

Some of the core ideas for this game are that the identity of an Orc is tied to two things: How he prefers to dish out carnage, and any noteworthy person or thing they've killed. That means that advancement specifically deals with those two things. The goal of an Orc is to kill, and the goal of the Warband is to destroy. Orcs help the Warband destroy, and the Warband helps the Orc kill.

Some questions I'll try to hash out before next time:

What are Trophies? What kind of Tools do orcs use/need? How does magic work? What are Kill-Paths and War-Paths? What kind of "monster" stats do humans and adventurers have? What kind of features does the Warband gain / grant to an individual orc, and vice versa? What exactly is the Warband?