Fishing minigame

 

One thing we see in so many video games out there is a fishing minigame dropped into a regular (usually fantasy) game. Even if what the game is about has nothing to do with fishing there are so many that offer up a chance to toss a line into the water to catch something. So why not do that with tabletop roleplaying games for something a little different. 

So I present to you the very rough, very unplaytested, Truly Rural Publishing Fishing Minigame Rules. These may change, they get all sorts of changed, none of the fish charts are all encompassing. Hell I may never work on it again, who knows?

The fishing rules revolve around a single D20 roll. You add your fishing skill + any bonuses + die roll and beat the target number of the fishing hole. The amount over the target number you roll determines what kind of fish you catch from the chart for the fishing hole.

A characters fishing skill starts off at level 0 and can go all the way up to 20. To raise your skill level you must spend a total number of days fishing equal to the next skill level. So to go from level 0 to 1 you must spend 24 hours of time fishing while going from level 1 to 2 will take 2 days or 48 hours. Keep track of your fishing time. The fishing hole determines how much time it takes to catch a fish.

Bonuses are from gear or magical items. Common gear bonuses are +1 for decent fishing gear, +2 for top of the line gear. Magical Items and specialized gear will be listed in the next (hopefully) instalment of these rules.

The Fishing Hole stats. A fishing hole has a target number that must be beat. As a rule the less likely one is to catch a fish from a fishing hole the higher it's target number. So a hole with a target number of 5 is easy to catch fish out of. The number then goes up by fives (5, 10, 15, 20) as the more difficult it is to catch a fish. The amount of hours needed to catch a fish is determined by dividing the difficulty by 5. So a difficulty 15 fishing hole may take up to 3 hours to catch a fish. There just aren't many there. Specialized gear (again forthcoming) can reduce that time.

Finally I have up one chart for freshwater fish that can be caught. This is a very basic list and each fishing hole could have their own custom tailored list with as many or as few types of fish in that location. I'll be doing more details on to this in the future.... if people are interested. Here is the basic list, the number on the left is how much you beat the target number by and the fish you caught is on the right. 

1-2      Crappie

2-4      Bluegill

5-6      Perch

7-8      Large Mouth Bass

9-10    Rainbow Trout

11-12  Striped Bass

13-14  Catfish

15-16  Flathead Catfish

17-18  Walleye 

19-20  Salmon 

So if you liked this and want to see it expanded upon with more details please share it around and let me know (like in the comments section). If you really liked it you can always buy me a Ko-Fi over on the right side of this blog or look at other options in the 'Support this Blog' tab at the top. 

Part Two can be found RIGHT HERE. Or you can look at the labels on this post and click on 'fishing' to find it and future installments. 

Happy Fishing.