Rules

Scooby-Doo uses a deliberately small Regard configuration. Its identity comes less from an encyclopedia of lore than from what the game teaches the table to notice and from how each archetype transforms uncertainty.

The world in a few lines

You are a group of college friends on summer vacation.

You have fixed up an old van and are driving across the United States, listening to music, eating whatever you can find, and stopping at places where no reasonable person would ever stop.

Inevitably, you run into:

• an abandoned motel;
• a closed amusement park;
• a haunted mine;
• an empty museum;
• an overwhelmed sheriff;
• a local notable who is far too helpful;
• a fluorescent monster that looks supernatural but is probably wearing a rubber mask.

The tone is that of a cartoon mystery.

Fear exists, but it is funny. Danger exists, but it is not trying to kill the characters. Coincidences are acceptable when they are funny and coherent with the trope. Complicated plans almost always go wrong.

And yet, somehow, the group solves the mystery.

Creating the characters

Each player chooses an archetype.

The lists below are not closed sets of abilities. They are fictional truths meant to make the character's relevance space immediately visible.

Keep the keywords you enjoy, cross out the ones you do not, and add a few of your own. The character is ready as soon as the table understands who they are.

The Handsome Guy with the terrible plan

The self-appointed leader. Charismatic, confident, and always ready to solve a simple problem with a Rube Goldberg machine.

Possible keywords

• square jaw;
• ultra-bright smile;
• supremely confident;
• natural authority;
• former scout leader;
• IQ inversely proportional to good looks;
• obsessed with elaborate traps;
• "Let's split up";
• driver's license;
• absolute faith in his own plan.

Possible relationships

• secretly in love with the Pretty Airhead;
• convinced the Brain admires his plans;
• considers the Clumsy Duo a permanent logistical hazard;
• looks at himself a little too often in the Van's rear-view mirror.

The Pretty Airhead

The one who attracts trouble like a magnet and regularly discovers essential things without understanding how.

Possible keywords

• always impeccable wardrobe;
• refreshing naivety;
• piercing scream;
• danger-prone;
• improbable handbag;
• tactical makeup;
• black belt in shopping;
• hairpin lockpicking;
• mysterious ability to be in exactly the wrong place.

Possible relationships

• flirts with the monster without realizing it;
• treats the Brain as her best friend even when she is not listening to her;
• thinks the Handsome Guy's plans are "super smart";
• always has something unexpected for the Clumsy Duo.

The Brain

The brains of the group. Skeptical, methodical, and probably the only person who thinks a clue is more interesting than a sandwich.

Possible keywords

• severe myopia;
• "My glasses!";
• turtleneck sweater;
• absolute skepticism;
• sarcasm;
• walking encyclopedia;
• relentless deduction;
• incomprehensible scientific jargon;
• crawls on the floor to inspect a trace;
• always finds the hidden switch.

Possible relationships

• secretly in love with the Handsome Guy;
• despairing at the group's intellectual level;
• reluctantly protects the Clumsy Duo;
• the only person who approximately knows how to repair the Van.

The Clumsy Duo — two players

The magnificent cowards. They mostly think about eating and running away. That is often what saves everyone.

The Duo is played by two distinct players.

The Space Cadet

Possible keywords:

• always spaced out;
• absurd metabolism;
• Olympic-level coward;
• "No way!";
• stomach on legs;
• appetite of destruction;
• surprisingly fast legs when something growls behind him.

The Animal Companion

It can be a talking dog, but also a raccoon, giant iguana, or any other creature the table is willing to live with for two hours.

Possible keywords:

• human-like expressions;
• championship coward;
• easily bribed with a treat;
• nose for trouble;
• able to disguise itself as a waiter in three seconds;
• approximate understanding of human speech.

Shared relationship

They are inseparable.

They have their own language, share food, hide together, and paradoxically become more effective when they panic side by side.

That relationship is written directly into their Prism.

The fifth member: the Van

The Van has a small shared sheet created by the whole table. Choose or invent a few truths in each family.

Its appearance

• psychedelic paint job;
• rust hidden under stickers;
• right headlight that blinks by itself;
• dubious curtains;
• ridiculous name painted on the side.

How it runs

• engine that coughs whenever everyone panics;
• breaks down in the middle of nowhere;
• starts instantly, but only when nobody is in a hurry;
• alarming handbrake;
• radio that receives a single station.

Its interior

• secret snack reserve;
• questionable mattress;
• wildly oversized sound system;
• the Brain's improvised laboratory;
• useless equipment that will probably become essential at the end.

The Van is not mere decoration. Its truths can become Bets, cause problems, provide solutions, or determine why the group happens to stop directly in front of the haunted motel the scenario needed.

The grammar of relevance

Scooby-Doo does not require an encyclopedia of lore. Its identity comes primarily from what the game teaches the table to notice.

The following truths naturally tend to become relevant:

• fear;
• hunger;
• snacks;
• clues;
• disguises;
• secret passages;
• overcomplicated plans;
• splitting up the group;
• absurd coincidences;
• defective machines;
• relationships among the team members;
• personal gimmicks;
• signs of a hoax;
• the economic motive behind the "supernatural";
• the mask behind the monster.

This list does not forbid anything else. It simply indicates where this game likes to look.

Common rules

Scooby-Doo keeps the general Regard loop.

1. The player states their Intention.
2. The table clarifies the Focus and its Zoom if necessary.
3. Fictional truths that genuinely matter become Bets.
4. Each Bet normally contributes one D6.
5. The character resolves according to their Prism.
6. The result is interpreted from the scene and the Bets.

The rule everyone can remember

An even result is a Success.
An odd result is normally not a Success.

This rule gives the game a common language even when some Prisms add patterns, shift interpretation, or produce a standalone result.

The table does not hunt for bonuses

Keywords on the sheet are reminders of fiction, not buttons to activate.

The GM can pitch the game like this:

"Tell me what you do and what genuinely matters in the scene. Every relevant truth becomes a Bet. Even numbers are Successes. But the world does not answer each of you in the same way. Play your characters to the hilt; the Prisms will do the rest."

Tone contract

In this implementation:

• characters do not die because of a bad roll;
• the monster tries to frighten, capture, lock up, separate, or ridicule them;
• failure should create movement rather than stop the investigation;
• consequences can be absurd without becoming arbitrary;
• the GM adjudicates relevance quickly in order to preserve the pace.

The Prisms

Each archetype has its own way of transforming uncertainty.

Design note

These Prisms are deliberately asymmetric. The goal is not for them to be identical in abstract power, but for each one to push its player toward a different, recognizable behavior.

The Clumsy Duo — Cross-Resonance

The Duo does not necessarily play against an opposing pool. Each player gathers their own pool of Bets and rolls separately.

Normal Successes

Every even result rolled by either member of the Duo normally produces one Success. Then add the Successes from both pools together.

Cross-pairs of odd results

Their clumsiness becomes a resource when it resonates between them.

For each odd value 1, 3, or 5, compare the two pools. Each pair made of one die from each character showing the same odd value produces one additional Success. A die can belong to only one cross-pair.

In other words, for each odd value, the number of additional Successes equals the smaller number of occurrences of that value across the two pools.

Example:

• Shaggy rolls 3, 3, 4, 5;
• Scooby rolls 3, 2, 5, 5.

The even results already produce two Successes: 4 and 2.

The pools also contain:

• one cross-paired 3 → +1 Success;
• one cross-paired 5 → +1 Success.

Total: 4 Successes.

Shaggy's two 3s therefore do not create a Success with each other. Resonance has to cross between the two characters.

They are mechanically better when they panic together.

The number of Successes primarily measures the scale of the useful chaos their action produces. A small success may simply let them escape. A large success may send them racing across a kitchen on a cart, knocking over a shelf, revealing a secret passage, dropping the monster into its own trap, and finishing the chase with a sandwich still intact.

The result can stand on its own: it does not need an opposing pool to make sense.

The Brain — Logic

The Brain uses the form of resolution closest to the standard configuration.

She gathers her Bets. The GM gathers the Bets of adversity or the obstacle. Both pools are rolled: even numbers are Successes and the totals are compared.

Her Prism is deliberately restrained. She lives in a world where:

• a clue must have a cause;
• a hypothesis must survive contact with the facts;
• a secret door probably has a mechanism;
• a fluorescent ghost almost certainly bought its paint somewhere.

A Victory produces a rational discovery.

A Defeat should not block the investigation: it may make her lose her glasses, follow a false lead, get covered in soot, or obtain the clue with a complication.

She is the person trying to play a rational detective game in the middle of a cartoon.

The Handsome Guy — Misalignment

The Handsome Guy generally makes a classic opposed roll: evens, Successes, comparison. But his result resonates sideways.

If he wins

His plan works exactly as intended... but on the wrong target, at the wrong time, or in a way that creates a new problem.

The net catches the Clumsy Duo. The cage drops perfectly, but the monster was already behind him. The door locks exactly as planned, with the entire team on the wrong side.

If he loses

His plan collapses spectacularly... and the disaster accidentally produces the effect the group actually needed.

The pulley snaps and knocks out the monster. The giant fan tears away the scenery and reveals the secret passage. The trap triggers too early, scares the ghost away, and tears off a piece of its mask.

The roll therefore does not merely answer "does the plan work?" It answers:

How does the world transform the Handsome Guy's confidence in his own plan?

Design note

This Prism is deliberately the most experimental in the implementation. The Handsome Guy's tendency to split up the group is still carried primarily by his keywords and the grammar of relevance rather than by a mechanical incentive as strong as the Clumsy Duo's.

The Pretty Airhead — Meaningful Accident

The Pretty Airhead can use dice of a distinct color if the table has some. This is not mandatory, but it makes her patterns immediately visible.

She can count evens as normal Successes when an opposition requires it. Her Prism mainly adds two ways to produce a particular event.

Accidental Charm

When the monster has an opposing pool, look at its highest result.

If at least one of the Pretty Airhead's dice shows exactly the same value, she produces a moment of Accidental Charm.

The monster becomes distracted, unsettled, touched, or temporarily unable to continue its action normally.

She may drop her mirror; the monster picks it up. She may recognize a familiar detail under the mask and create an awkward silence. She may simply speak to it as if it were a perfectly ordinary person at the exact moment everyone else is screaming.

This pattern does not necessarily replace the main result. It adds a fictional event the GM must incorporate.

The story-changing "Oops"

The Pretty Airhead looks for pretty patterns.

If her roll contains a sequence of at least three consecutive values — for example 2-3-4 or 3-4-5 — or at least three identical dice, she triggers an Oops.

The Oops shifts the scene in a significant and accidental way.

She leans against a bookshelf to redo her shoelace and opens the secret passage. She presses the red button while looking for the light switch and disables the monster's mechanism. She trips on a carpet and reveals the trapdoor the Brain has been looking for for ten minutes.

The Oops can occur whether or not the main roll is victorious.

If nothing special appears, she simply suffers the normal direction of the roll. Within the game's tone, however, a Defeat never means serious violence or death. She may break a nail, be separated from the group, lose her bag, fall through a trapdoor, get locked in a VIP room with a tray of canapés, or draw the monster somewhere else.

Advice for the GM

Keep the investigation moving

A failure should not make the mystery unsolvable. It changes how information is obtained, what it costs, or the situation in which the group discovers it.

The Brain may fail while examining a boiler, lose her glasses, and land directly on the dry-cleaning ticket that gives away the culprit. The Duo may run in the wrong direction and accidentally burst into the room containing the phosphorescent paint.

Adjudicate Bets quickly

The main pacing risk is turning the relevance conversation into a negotiation over bonuses.

In a two-hour game, the right rhythm is:

"Yes, that matters."
"No, not for this Focus."
"That is already contained in this other Bet."
"Excellent. Take the die."

Favor proposals that are immediately readable in the fiction, reinforce the trope, make the table laugh, and create new possibilities for interpretation.

Make keywords resonate against the characters

A truth is not always favorable.

Severe myopia can explain why the Brain misses something. Temperamental engine can make the Van stop in front of the motel. Obsessed with elaborate traps can be exactly why the Handsome Guy's plan requires fifteen minutes of preparation and six absurd objects.

Cut when the trope has done its job

A chase is funny as long as it escalates. An investigation is interesting as long as the players discover something. A trap is entertaining as long as it still threatens to work.

Once the scene has produced its moment, move on.

Ready to see it in motion? Play The Mystery of the Last Fry Motel.