Firebreathing Kittens: Recent Episodes
Firebreathing Kittens
You can listen to these episodes in any order, and skip any you don't enjoy. Each episode has a standalone microplot, so you can jump in at any point in the season's overarching story. The cast rotates. Join us as we solve mysteries, attempt comedic banter, and enjoy friendship.
Being a King is tough. Servants being drained, magic items going haywire, assassins, cursed statues?! Join Arthur, Kairos and Lia in this actual play podcast of Messerspiel as they battle against honey.
Being a King is tough. Servants being drained, magic items going haywire, assassins, cursed statues?! Join Arthur, Kairos and Lia in this actual play podcast of Messerspiel as they battle against honey.
A wealthy industrialist skips out on a tiny tax bill? Not on FBK's watch! Join Arthur, Sofia, and Stewart as they solve a missing magnate mystery. Coffin Cough is an actual play episode of Discworld.
A wealthy industrialist skips out on a tiny tax bill? Not on FBK's watch! Join Arthur, Sofia, and Stewart as they solve a missing magnate mystery. Coffin Cough is an actual play episode of Discworld.
How To Play Discworld
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m a player in an upcoming session using the rules for the official tabletop roleplaying game of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my fellow players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Discworld game at home.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Tests
- Traits
- Rolling dice
- Luck
- Group tests
- How to attack
- Magic (Jommetry)
- Dying
- Helping allies
- Building a character
Game category. Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld book series has sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. In the 1990’s, Pratchett was the UK’s best selling author. Fans adore these forty one books, and their characters such as Rincewind, Sam Vimes, Granny Weatherwax, Tiffany Aching, Moist von Lipwig, and the anthropomorphic personification of Death. This is the official Discworld tabletop roleplaying game. Mechanically, this game uses opposed rolls to determine outcomes. Players cite one of their traits that they feel gives them experience at what they’re attempting to do. The Game Master thinks about how well prepared the player character is, and how this specific situation affects the difficulty, and tells the player to use either a four, six, ten, or twelve sided dice as their outcome dice. The Game Master always rolls a d8 for their narrativium dice. If the player outcome dice result is higher than the Game Master narrativium dice result, they influence the story as they intended. On a tie they still do, with a complication. When the GM’s narrativium dice result is higher, the story is influenced all right but in a way the player might not have been anticipating. The GM describes the complication. That’s a quick summary of the rules. Let’s go into more detail.
Tests. When your character tries to influence the narrative, they will make a test. If you pass the test, you influence the story in the way you intended. If you fail the test, you influence the story in a different way than you intended. Whether you succeed or fail depends on an opposed dice roll. You will roll a dice called the outcome dice that could have four sides, six sides, ten sides, or twelve sides. The words d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20 refer to which dice you’re rolling, with the letter d meaning dice and the number meaning how many sides. The Game Master will roll a dice called the narrativium dice that has eight sides each time, a d8.
Traits. Every character has a few traits that define them. These traits are your character’s organization, background, species, niche, quirks, core and luck. During a test, you will cite one of your character’s traits as a reason why they should be good at doing something. The GM will consider how much experience the character has with the situation and what they’re trying to do, and will tell the player which outcome dice to roll, a d4, d6, d10, or d12. The GM can compel you to use a trait you’d rather not for a test if it’s more appropriate. If your character has a trait that fits the situation perfectly, lots of experience in what they’re doing, and it’s a well justified action, the GM will tell you to roll with a d12 outcome dice. If you’re trying to do something you’re entirely unprepared for, the GM will tell you to roll with a d4 outcome dice. For example, a character with the trait Hits Like A Troll will probably be told to use a d12 when smashing into a locked door with their shoulder, but a d4 when finely picking the lock. The difficulty of the situation can affect which dice gets used. The rule book uses the example that if a thief who is used to scaling roofs normally would be granted a d12 by the GM, the dice could be decreased to a d10 or even a d6 if the roof is covered in goose fat and the thief is having saucepans thrown at them while they carry a heavy bag of gold.
Core traits are different than other traits. Every character can only have one core trait. You don’t start out with one. When you have a particularly meaningful moment with your character, you can state what narrative trigger formed your core trait or brought it to the surface. If you’re using the core trait as part of a test in the moment of identifying it, use a d12 dice for that first test where it’s being formed. Not every character will claim a core trait. Don’t try to force the moment. Similarly, if someone is forming a core trait, let them have their moment. The rule book says, quote, “Don’t butt in. Butts are for goats, after all. Let them have their moment as their character realizes just who they are and what they stand for. Then, after a sufficient pause, crack that witty one-liner you’ve been holding back.” End quote.
Rolling dice. The Game Master and the player will both roll dice during the test to see what happens. If the player’s outcome dice is a higher number than the Game Master’s narrativium dice, then the player influenced the story in the way they intended. If the GM’s narrativium dice is higher, then a capital c Consequence happens. A Consequence is a twist in the narrative. A complication. If the outcome dice and narrativium dice are the same number, then both happen: the character is successful and there’s a Consequence. Consequences can be things in the story, and they can also be that the character gains a new, less than positive trait. Traits gained from capital c Consequences are temporary. If your character takes the time to deal with them, they go away.
Luck. All player characters start with four luck. Four is your maximum luck, too. There are two ways to spend luck during a test. The first way is that a player character may spend one luck to avoid the capital c Consequence of their action. The second way to use luck is that before a player rolls their outcome dice, their fellow players can offer that they’re going to spend one luck to help. The first player may accept or reject this offer of help. If accepted, the second player spends their one luck, then asks the GM what outcome dice they’d get if they rolled this particular trait from their character. The GM’s narativium dice does not get rerolled. The second player’s outcome dice then replaces the first player’s outcome dice, whether it was better or worse. By helping, the second player has opened themselves up to the consequences if this test fails. Because only one luck may be spent per test, there is no way to spend a luck to avoid the consequence if a player helped on a test. Luck doesn’t recover on its own. When the GM feels you’ve done a particularly ridiculous plan or excellent roleplay or wants to reward you in some way, they might tell you you’ve gained one luck.
Group tests. There are two types of group tests. Seeing if one person failed is a type of group test where everyone in the group is doing an activity and one person’s failure can stop the group from achieving their goal. For example, if the whole group is sneaking and one person’s lack of stealth would alert the guards. For seeing if one person failed, everyone rolls dice and the lowest outcome dice is compared to the GM’s narrativium dice. Seeing if one person succeeded is a type of group test where one person’s success lets the group achieve the goal.For seeing if one person succeeded, everyone rolls dice and the highest outcome dice result is compared to the GM’s narrativium dice. People involved in the group test can’t help one another because they’re all rolling.
How to attack. Physical fights and contests of wits are like other tests. Say what you want to do, what trait you’re using to do it, and roll the outcome dice the GM tells you is appropriate for your level of experience and the difficulty of the situation. If your result is higher than the d8 narrativium dice you succeeded. If lower, you impacted the story in a way you weren’t intending. If equal, then both things happen.
Magic. Some characters can do magic. There are lots of types of magic. The type performed by wizards is called jommetry. People of any gender can be wizards, which is the topic of the Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites. If your character can do jommetry, it goes like this. Step one, state what you want to do with your jommetry magic. Step two, name the trait you’d like to use, and why it will get you the largest outcome dice. This is usually your niche trait or quirk trait. Step three, spend luck. How much luck depends on the impact to the story. If the story isn’t impacted, there is no luck cost. If you minorly impact the story, the spell costs 1 to 2 luck to attempt. If you’re trying to majorly impact the story, that will cost either 3 or 4 luck. Huge impact spells could cost more, like a spell affecting the whole Discworld is estimated to cost 10 luck in the example in the rule book. Any character helping can contribute any amount of luck to help the spell get cast. So you spend the luck amount the GM says is required. The last step to casting jommetry magic is to roll the outcome dice and compare to the GM’s narrativium dice. If you succeed, name the spell and suffer a capital C Consequence because magic has consequences. Magical consequences can’t be avoided because you already spent luck on the test. If you fail, you didn’t cast magic and there is no capital c Consequence. Remember, you can’t magic another wizard without knowing their name. And you’re very very unlikely to permanently change someone’s shape.
Dying. The mechanic for dying in the official Discworld tabletop roleplaying game is that if you fail a roll so astronomically badly that the Consequence would see your character removed from the scene or possibly the story, this is called a capital e capital c Exceptional Consequence. There are two types of Exceptional Consequence: a near death experience, and a magical mishap. Examples of magical mishaps are that your character could become quote, “an orangutan, a talking dog, or pile of something particularly unpleasant.” Another magical mishap is teleportation, such as being hurled through the dungeon dimensions. The player should be involved in deciding how their characer changes, and help come up with an appropriate new or changed trait with which to return to the table. A near death experience is that Death, the person, not the state, appears. Wizards and cats can always see and interact with Death. Now you can, too. Everything fades to gray and all the other characters freeze as Death arrives on the scene. Death speaks in all capital letters. The player now has a choice. Do you take Death’s hand and let Death guide you to where you need to go? Or do you talk to Death about why you need to return tot he story to finish what you started? The decision is up to the player. If you choose to return to the party, then your character will have a new or permanently changed trait to reflect their near death experience. If you choose to take Death’s hand, then the player can continue in the session as a different character, for example a non player character who appeared earlier in the session.
Helping allies. The major ways that you can help allies in the official Disworld tabletop roleplaying game are that you can spend luck to help them on a test or when they cast magic. The person who spends luck to help their friend also suffers from any capital C Consequence if there is one.
Building a character. There are nine steps to filling out a character sheet. Consequences, Luck, Name, Picture, Organization, Background, Niche, Quirks, and Core. Consequences. Your character doesn’t start with any Consequences, so, you’re done. Voila. You’ll acquire Consequence traits when you fail rolls during gameplay. Luck. All player characters start with 4 luck, so write a 4 here. Name. Write your name here. Picture. You’re welcome to put a picture of your character here. The picture is called an iconograph on the example character sheet. The organization is the group your character travels with. For us, that’s Firebreathing Kittens. Background is where you’re from. Most people write their species and where they’re from here. Niche is something that you can uniquely do, compared to the other people your party. Each character gets three quirks. There are tables for them on pages 73 to 90 to give you ideas. Here are six examples. What is the first thing people notice about you? What is your favorite hobby? What class did you struggle with and why? What was the tipping point that caused you to take action? Why did you pick your career? What do you wish you weren’t? Lastly, leave core blank. You can gain a core trait during a defining character moment during the roleplay of the game.
Here is an example character sheet. Consequences start blank. Luck: 4. Name: The Luggage. Iconograph: there’s a picture of a wooden chest with many feet. Organization: Twoflower is mostly unaware of his Luggage’s habits, and would not believe you if you told him. Rincewind on the other hand is all too aware. Background: A large sapient pearwood chest supported by far too many legs. Niche: Dog-like righ tup until it becomes much more eldritch. Three quirks. Half suitcase, half homicidal maniac. More legs than most are comfortable with. Bigger on the inside. Core starts blank.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Discworld in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Discworld in action. We encourage you to find the official tabletop roleplaying game of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Just dropped: a floating island east of New Inthera! Join Barnabas, Belle, Lia and Markely as they explore this new land and whiffs of their past. This is an actual play podcast of Gates of Krystalia.
Just dropped: a floating island east of New Inthera! Join Barnabas, Belle, Lia and Markely as they explore this new land and whiffs of their past. This is an actual play podcast of Gates of Krystalia.
A shadow, rockstar and undercover dragon go BEAST MODE! Tune into an actual play podcast of Reverse Beastmaster as Withered Wing, Muse, and Lia dismantle relics of oppression and follow animals’ whims.
A shadow, rockstar and undercover dragon go BEAST MODE! Tune into an actual play podcast of Reverse Beastmaster as Withered Wing, Muse, and Lia dismantle relics of oppression and follow animals’ whims.
The Firebreathing Kittens Guild members find themselves in possession of a mysterious package that points to the death of a famous and acclaimed member. Varek finds himself in a leadership position of two new initiates, Lia and Kairos, to discover what eldritch horrors have both killed such a high ranking adventuring veteran and also made villagers near the Tzu River disappear. Gaslight It Up is an actual play podcast of Call of Cthulhu.
The Firebreathing Kittens Guild members find themselves in possession of a mysterious package that points to the death of a famous and acclaimed member. Varek finds himself in a leadership position of two new initiates, Lia and Kairos, to discover what eldritch horrors have both killed such a high ranking adventuring veteran and also made villagers near the Tzu River disappear. Gaslight It Up is an actual play podcast of Call of Cthulhu.
Reports of werewolf attacks bring Varek, Tink, Barnabas, and Arthur to Castle Madrigal. Sadly, silver bullets will not solve this particular problem. An actual play of Behold The Holy Grail!
Reports of werewolf attacks bring Varek, Tink, Barnabas, and Arthur to Castle Madrigal. Sadly, silver bullets will not solve this particular problem. An actual play of Behold The Holy Grail!
In this actual play podcast of Nice Marines, the Firebreathing Kittens return to Blutburg on a diplomatic mission. Join Arthur, Lia and Muse as they… fix things? Sow the seeds of chaos? Why not both?
In this actual play podcast of Nice Marines, the Firebreathing Kittens return to Blutburg on a diplomatic mission. Join Arthur, Lia and Muse as they… fix things? Sow the seeds of chaos? Why not both?
May 2026 Rules Feedback Chat. Welcome to a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. This is our rules discussion where we discuss the rules we played in the past few games, for May 2026. We’ll discuss the tabletop roleplaying games Cottages & Cerberus, Pride & Extreme Prejudice, Ecryme, Kaiju Girls, Tiny Dungeon 2nd edition, Call of Cthulhu 7th edition, Tunnel Goons, and Alloyed version 2.2.
Join Sofia, Belle, and Queenie as they save the town of Blutburg from Scamantha's nefarious... oats? This adventure is an actual play podcast using the mechanics from Alloyed.
Join Sofia, Belle, and Queenie as they save the town of Blutburg from Scamantha's nefarious... oats? This adventure is an actual play podcast using the mechanics from Alloyed.
Join Professor Tinkerton Shellton & Kairos SabyTass as they explore ancient Turtle Tunnels, musical puzzles, a mysterious scroll, and something darker lurking below. Back To Futures Past is an actual play of the Tunnel Goons tabletop roleplaying game.
Join Professor Tinkerton Shellton & Kairos SabyTass as they explore ancient Turtle Tunnels, musical puzzles, a mysterious scroll, and something darker lurking below. Back To Futures Past is an actual play of the Tunnel Goons tabletop roleplaying game.
Gadzooks! Adraias and Belle try to keep their wits about them within the insanity-inducing Ashford manor. Join them in the adventure Dreamwalk Estate - an actual play podcast of Call of Cthulhu.
Gadzooks! Adraias and Belle try to keep their wits about them within the insanity-inducing Ashford manor. Join them in the adventure Dreamwalk Estate - an actual play podcast of Call of Cthulhu.
Caiyra, Dante and Sofia take a job to clear out a spooky mansion of its unwanted guests. Certainly nothing strange or mysterious is going to happen with this investigation. My Best Friend Cthulhu is an actual play podcast of Call of Cthulhu 7e.
Caiyra, Dante and Sofia take a job to clear out a spooky mansion of its unwanted guests. Certainly nothing strange or mysterious is going to happen with this investigation. My Best Friend Cthulhu is an actual play podcast of Call of Cthulhu 7e.
Spiders And How To Care For Them is an actual play podcast using the mechanics of Tiny Dungeon 2nd edition. Join Kyyyvvyynn, Sofia, and Muse as they battle other worldly arachnids in the silence of the library.
Spiders And How To Care For Them is an actual play podcast using the mechanics of Tiny Dungeon 2nd edition. Join Kyyyvvyynn, Sofia, and Muse as they battle other worldly arachnids in the silence of the library.
Happy April Fool's! Surprise! We have a collection of solo play adventures for you. These are games played with just one person. They can be journaling games, games played against an oracle or a table, by flipping cards, etc. This year we have The Tower of Icarus, O Patron Mine, Exclusive Interview, and The Eternal Duel. We hope you enjoy this unusual episode. We did.
Varek, Meg, and Muse are attending New Inthera Community College when the moon suddenly turns red and hydra heads start bursting out of the ground around campus. Turns out night classes are a lot more dangerous than advertised. Join the Firebreathing Kittens for an actual play of Kaiju Girls.
Varek, Meg, and Muse are attending New Inthera Community College when the moon suddenly turns red and hydra heads start bursting out of the ground around campus. Turns out night classes are a lot more dangerous than advertised. Join the Firebreathing Kittens for an actual play of Kaiju Girls.
In this actual play of the Ecryme system, Morning Mist, Sir Barnabas, and Belladonna Amrille come together to protect factory workers but find themselves faced with versions of their pasts.
In this actual play of the Ecryme system, Morning Mist, Sir Barnabas, and Belladonna Amrille come together to protect factory workers but find themselves faced with versions of their pasts.
How To Play Ecryme
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Ecryme. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Ecryme game at home.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Traits, skills, and specializations
- Rolling dice
- Spleen and ideal
- Difficulty and margins
- Self transcendence
- How to attack
- Impacts and dying
- Armor
- Effects
- Surprise
- Healing
- Helping allies
- Building a character
Game category. The first edition of Ecryme was released in French in 1994. Twenty years later, a second edition was released, which is what I’ll be talking about today. The word ecryme is the name of a mercury like liquid that covers most of the surface of the planet. Only small dotted islands of land are left. This game’s world has 1800’s technology: mass production, steam power, and dirigibles. Air ships and steam trains link the industrial cities on the islands. Bridges lift the trains above the ecryme. The people of this world try to avoid falling in. Most people who come into contact with the dense, motionless ecryme, the flat silver ocean that lacks waves, are corroded by the contact, blistering like being splashed with acid. Those who survive sometimes get unpredictable cephalic powers, which is the game’s magic system. The general mechanic of Ecryme is that you roll six sided dice, add modifiers from your character build, and compare that to the difficulty of the situation or to an opponent’s roll. Outside of combat, you roll two six sided dice, add them together, and add the skill from your character sheet that most closely matches what you’re trying to do. If a trait applies, add it, too. When your character has a specialization that applies, you get plus two to your roll. The sum is compared to the difficulty of the task. Eight is the lowest and sixteen is the highest difficulty score. If your dice roll plus skill plus trait plus specialization is lower than the difficulty, then you failed. If your dice roll plus skill plus trait plus specialization is equal to the difficulty, there is some kind of complication. If your dice roll plus skill plus trait plus specialization is higher than the difficulty, you succeeded. Combat is similar, except you roll four d6 and add your skill. Pick two dice to put into success, which is their word for attack, and two dice to put into reserve, which is their word for defense. If your success attack is higher than your opponent’s reserve defense, you hit them. The amount your success attack went over their reserve defense becomes the damage impact of the attack. The Ecryme rule book comes with a ton of prebuilt character sheets for you to play as or use as pre statted non player characters. I’ll list some. There’s an aeronaut, an archivist, a sword duelist, a wandering mapmaker, a military officer who specializes in explosives, a courtesan, a stilt walker, a glider pilot, a wealthy merchant, an ecryme diver, a preacher, a fugitive, a scholar, an ecryme flower harvester, and more.
Traits. Characters in Ecryme have traits that describe their physical appearance, personality, and social connections. Trait numbers range between negative and positive three. A normal person who is a nonplayer character averages about zero. A plus one means that your character has a little bit more of that trait than the average person. A plus two means they have a lot more than a normal person. A plus three means your character is extremely whatever that trait is. A negative one means that your character has a little bit less of that trait than the average person, a negative two means they have a lot less, and a negative three means they’re extremely lacking in whatever that trait is compared to someone normal. For example in the trait of height, a tall person would have the number one, a very tall person positive two, and an abnormally tall person positive three.
Every character in Ecryme has two points overall in traits. This can be any combination that equals two. For example, your character could have a single plus two trait. Or they could have two plus one traits. Or you could have three plus one traits and one negative one trait. As long as the character has two points in traits overall, you’re good. There isn’t a set list of defined trait words in the Ecryme rule book that you’re limited to using. A trait can be anything you want. You the player name the trait that best defines your character, and you pick which combination of traits equals plus two overall.
Skills. Every character in Ecryme has fifteen skills. Unlike a trait which can be anything you want, every character has the same list of skills, just different personalized numbers in each of them. The fifteen skills are clustered into three categories: physical, mental, and social. The physical category’s five skills are athletics, driving, fencing, brawling, and shooting. The mental category’s five skills are anthropomechanology, ecrymology, traumatology, traversology, and urbanology. The social category’s five skills are quibbling, creativity, loquacity, guile, and performance. The skills are all used offensively and defensively, so for example the medicine skill traumatology can be used to heal or to make someone sick. The guile skill is used both to hide and to search.
Each skill has a number between zero and ten. Starting characters have thirty points distributed amongst those fifteen skills. This is the same pool of points that can be spent on specializations. You can perform a physical or social task that your character has zero skill points in, you’re just less likely to be successful than a character with five or ten points in that skill. Mental skills represent your knowledge in that area, so if your number is zero you know nothing about it and can’t attempt a roll. For starter level characters, no skill will be above five points.
Traumatology? Traversology? I didn’t find some of the skill words self explanatory, so here is what the fifteen skills are used for. Athletics is used when your character runs, climbs, jumps, etc. Driving is used when your character drives a car, pilots an airship, rides a horse, etc. Fencing is when your character is dueling or fighting with any sword, dagger, or bladed weapon. Brawling is used for weaponless combat and fighting with improvised weapons like wrestling, boxing, arm locking, or tripping an opponent. Shooting is the skill used to fire long range weapons. Anthropomechanology is used for understanding, using, and repairing machines such as clocks, locks, vehicles, etc. Ecrymology is the skill used to understand the natural world like flora, fauna, geology, meteorology, etc. Traumatology is medical knowledge and the character’s ability to do surgery, know pharmacology, take the right dose of medicine, etc. Traversology is your character’s skill at knowing about the traverses, the bridges that span the world, and also includes geography, map making, and the construction of bridges. Urbanotechnology is how much the character knows about the city, such as the local slang and dress codes, the richness of their social and professional contacts, knowledge of local history and religion and culture, etc. Quibbling is the skill you use when arguing with or persuading another person, giving commands, interrogating, intimidating, bartering, etc. Creativity is how much your character values creating and crafting, and includes activities like painting, throwing clay on a wheel, forging, sculpting, writing stage plays, etc. Loquacity is the suave counterpart of quibbling, when your character tries to be charming, tries to make a good impression, collects gossip, investigates, lies, spreads false information and is believed, etc. Guile is how well your character can camouflage themself, hide, search without being detected, sneak down an alley, pick a lock, perform sleight of hand, etc. Guile is used both to hide and to search. Lastly, performance is the skill your character uses when singing, acting, playing instruments, etc actions in front of an audience.
There is also another category of skills, but sort of like how in other games not every character is a spell casting wizard, not every character will have this category of skills called cephaly. Cephaly is a mind power that people in Ecryme can get by coming into contact with the liquid mercury ecryme the game is named after. The five cephaly skills are elegy that creates illusions, entelechy which is your power level and the combat skill you use for facing off against other cephalic beings, mekany that remote controls machines, psyche that remote controls living beings and people, and scoria which is divination. If you want to be a cephal in Ecryme, the different difficulties and ways you can use your cephalic skills are listed on page 267 with some examples of what you can do at different difficulty levels. For example shrinking something is a difficulty of ten, and controlling your target is a difficulty of eleven. Not every character has magic, so you might not use that list at all.
Specializations. When a skill has at least five points, you can choose to spend one point during character creation to get a specialization in that skill. Specializations are specific activities your character excels at. Some examples for the athletics skill could be running or climbing or carrying. The driving skill could have a specification in a type of vehicle, like an airship or a train. For the creativity skill, you could get specific about the type of art your character is creative in, like painting, pottery, or sculpture. A specialization adds plus two to the roll if you are doing that very narrow specialized activity.
Do you dream of shouting kamehameha in battle and ending things with your super awesome special combat move? Pages 245, 246, and 247 list some. They’re called maneuvers. You can spend one skill point to add one maneuver to your character sheet just like if you were buying a specialization. Each can only be used once per combat. Some of the maneuvers have requirements for when they can be used, like the Coup de Jarnac needs you to have a success attack margin of at least four. The same combat mechanics can be used for arguing, so pages 248 and 249 list maneuvers you can use when debating someone.
Rolling dice. In Ecryme, you determine how good a character is at something, and how likely you the player are to succeed at that action, by rolling dice, adding your character’s traits, skills, and specializations, and comparing the sum versus the difficulty number. All rolls are done using six sided dice, also called d6. One dice represents reason, logic, and planning. The other dice represents emotion, feelings, and acting impulsively with your gut. You can use two different colored dice or can roll on different areas of your table to keep track of which d6 is reason and which is emotion. When you roleplay your character’s success or failure from that roll, you can lean into the higher of the two dice. If emotion was higher, you can roleplay an intense emotion. If reason was higher, you can roleplay being logical to succeed, or roleplay how over thinking and hesitating caused your failure.
Spleen in Ecryme is a character’s driving fear. Here are some example spleens. A duelist is repelled by the idea of taking another person’s life. This spleen fear makes them only strike extremities when dueling, making them miss more. But they accept missing more because it means they won’t kill anyone while dueling. Another example is a wealthy cosmopolitan person who has heard word of a rebellion. Their spleen is their refusal to accept a rebellion’s potential for chaos and the loss of their own personal power. This spleen fear motivates them to donate to the police and to snitch when they find out where the rebellion’s meeting house is. Another example of a spleen is a young street tough, a hooligan running around with a gang of fellow hooligans at night, who becomes furious if a competitor steps foot on her turf. She will fight them viciously because her spleen, her motivating fear, is that her found family will lose its territory and disband. These are all examples of spleen, a core fear that drives the character’s actions. If spleen is relevant to a roll, roll an extra dice and discard the highest one. Discarding that extra highest dice will make your overall roll lower and worse. If you lose your spleen or ideal during a game session, all of your rolls are at negative two for the rest of the session. Then before the next game session, make a new one.
Ideal in Ecryme is a character’s motivating hope. It’s a principle they look up to that helps them overcome any challenge. Here are some example ideals. An artist aspires to create their perfect masterpiece. An archivist’s ideal is to collect a sample of all flora and fauna. A courtesan hopes to make enough money to stop working. An ambitious worker wants a promotion that comes with a large raise and more respect. An aeronaut captain loves her ship and crew above all else. These are all examples of ideal, an aspiration they feel positively towards that helps them face daily life. If ideal is relevant to a roll, roll an extra dice and discard the lowest one. Discarding that extra lowest dice will make your overall roll higher and better. If you lose your spleen or ideal during a game session, all of your rolls are at negative two for the rest of the session. Then before the next game session, make a new one.
Difficulty. Outside of combat, the difficulty of the task you’ll face will range between eight, easy, and sixteen, almost impossible. Eight difficulty tasks are the most common, while ten and twelve difficulty tasks happen uncommonly, and fourteen and sixteen difficulty tasks happen very rarely in the world in general. You’re on an adventure, so you’ll probably attempt to do actions more challenging than a normal person would succeed at.
Margins. Margin is the difference between the sum of your numbers and the difficulty rating of what you were trying to do. If your two d6 dice roll plus trait plus skill plus specialization is higher than the difficulty number, that is a positive margin. Success! You succeeded at what you were trying to do. If your two d6 dice roll plus trait plus skill plus specialization is equal to the difficulty number, that is a margin of zero. Margins of zero are up to the game master, called a conductor in Ecryme, to interpret. Both success and failure happen with a margin of zero. There could be a complication, or a compromised victory, or a defeat with some positive side to it. If your two d6 dice roll plus trait plus skill plus specialization is lower than the difficulty number, then you failed. The bigger the margin, the bigger the effect. If your negative margin was three, then the failure is more extreme than if the negative margin was one. The highest or lowest your margin can be is called your maximum margin. Your maximum margin is equal to your skill plus your specialization. For example if your number in the traumatology skill is five and your specialization in surgery is two, your maximum margin when removing your ally’s appendix to save their life is five plus two is seven. Because the highest margin a character can achieve is capped at their skill level plus specialization, that can matter for opposed rolls. For opposed rolls, each player or non player character makes a roll, and the person with the higher margin wins. For example let’s say you’re dueling an opponent whose maximum margin in fencing is seven and yours is two. If you both get a margin of three, they actually get it and win, while your maximum margin being capped at two makes you lose the duel. A minimum margin is when a conductor asks for multiple rolls that when added together will add up to a goal number. For example, the conductor can set the minimum margin at six to climb a wall, and the party will accomplish their goal as a group after a few rolls whose margins add up to six. One player throws a rope on a hook up at the top of the wall and scrambles up it, getting a margin of two. The second player climbs the rope and reaches down a helping hand, getting a margin of three. The third player grabs the offered hand and climbs to the top, getting a margin of two, reaching that six minimum margin and accomplishing the collective goal.
Here is an example of a roll outside of combat. You are currently arguing with a streetcar driver. The driver wasn’t paying attention when you paid, but you already did. They insist you pay again. How will you resolve this? It’s time to roll dice. You will roll two d6 and add your trait, skill, and any specializations that apply. The game master says the difficulty is twelve. Eight is lower and sixteen is higher, so twelve is in the middle, not the easiest or most difficult. You roll two d6 and get a two and a four for six on the dice. Now, which trait, skill, and specialization do you want to use to roleplay this? That depends on what your character is best at.
You could be playing as the example character Marcellin on page 206 of the rule book. Marcellin was born to parents who work in a circus and works as a strongman himself. But he dreams of running away from the circus because he believes he has a greater destiny elsewhere. His ambition is to become an important and respected person. However, he would feel guilty about abandoning his family and found family at the circus, who depend on him. Traits range between negative one and three. Marcellin has three traits. True force of nature, plus two, tall, plus one, and not very attractive, minus one. The trait that applies most to convincing a person is probably that he’s not very attractive, minus one. Skills range between zero and ten. Marcellin’s skill in quibbling is a two. Marcellin does have one specialization, brute force, which gives him a plus two when performing his strong man act in the circus, but doesn’t really help him plead his case to the streetcar driver. His overall number is six from the dice minus one from being not very attractive plus two for his skill in quibbling, which is seven overall. Seven is less than the difficulty of twelve, so with a negative margin, Marcellin fails to convince the streetcar driver that he had already paid. The streetcar driver will not let him on. Marcellin could now either pay a second time, or get off the streetcar, or try to beat up the driver and drive the streetcar himself, et cetera.
Let’s reexamine that scenario with a different example character. The difficulty is still set at twelve and you’ve rolled a two and a four for a six on the dice. You are now roleplaying as the rich merchant on page 229 of the rule book. After a convenient marriage to the Count de Mortsauf gave her seed money for investing, she began making lucrative business deals that have been an asset to her konzern, a konzern is like a company in Ecryme, and a bane to her competitors. She has two traits. One trait is that she has an image of purity of righteousness, plus one, and the other is that she has secretly made some contacts with the Black Lily group, plus one. Her skill in quibbling is five. She has two specializations: bartering and making threats. Each specialization gives plus two when doing those activities. Like the scenario with Marcellin, the streetcar driver wasn’t paying attention when the rich merchant paid, but she insists that she did. The driver wants her to pay again. The difficulty is twelve. With six on the dice and a five in the quibbling skill, the rich merchant is at eleven without adding a trait or specialization.
There are multiple different ways to role play this argument with the streetcar driver as the rich merchant and succeed. I’ll demonstrate two ways. The first, with zero margin, is to add one from the trait of her purity and righteousness, and to simply make a pure and righteous expression and insist that yes, she did pay. With a zero margin, the conductor could invent a complication or a compromised victory or a defeat with some positive aspect. The conductor could say, the driver believes you, but your insistence was noticed by a fellow rich person who had been sitting on the streetcar, who now believes are are poor. Like witnessing someone’s credit card get declined and them have to use another card, it doesn’t look good to be seen to not have enough money. The second way the player could role play this situation is to use the six from the dice plus five from the quibbling skill plus one from her contact with the Black Lily group plus two from her specialization in making threats. That scenario could look like this. The distracted streetcar driver staring out the window looks back as the streetcar dips when she steps onboard. The driver pauses her as she walks on, saying she didn’t pay. The fellow rich person on the streetcar watches as the merchant smiles insidiously, leans forward a little bit, and whispers something to the streetcar driver that their peer couldn’t hear. The streetcar driver blanches, all the blood draining from their face, eyes wide with horror, but just for a split second. The driver nervously tips their head in respect and waves the rich merchant onboard. Her mouth quirks into the slightest of smiles as she boards the streetcar, demurely greeting her peer as she walks past and takes a seat.
Two different characters, two different ways to role play the scenario. But the general idea is the same. You add the dice roll to your trait and skill and any specialization that applies. If the number is greater than the difficulty you succeed, and if the number is less than the difficulty you fail. A margin of zero is interpreted by the conductor however they want, mixing success and failure.
Self transcendence in Ecryme roleplaying-wise is when your character pushes themself past their limits. Mechanically, it’s when you spend a point from a skill to increase a roll. That point doesn’t recover until the next session you play in. Here’s an example. Your character has a three in athletics. You are teetering on the edge, way up high. To make sure that you don’t fall off, before you roll, you declare that you’re spending spend two of your skill points from athletics. You then roll your two d6 and add your trait, skill, and specialization, plus a guaranteed two from the skill points you spent. That’s a two and a three on the dice, plus a trait of positive one, plus an athletics skill of three, plus the two skill points, for eleven overall. Your athletics skill is still at three for this roll. After this roll, your skill will be lowered from three to one. It will return to three at the start of the next session. A skill can’t go down to negative values. Zero is the lowest a skill can be. If you have a specialization in this skill that also applies to this particular roll, you can do self-transcendence after rolling the dice, otherwise self-transcendence must be declared before the dice get rolled.
When you use self transcendance in combat, you pick one, either success attack or reserve defense, and apply the self transcendance to one, not both. The skill doesn’t decrease until after the attack is resolved.
How to attack. So far I’ve talked about rolls that use two six sided dice, then add your trait, skill, and specialization. Combat is similar, but you roll four dice. After seeing the results of the dice, choose where they go. Put two of the d6 into a pool called success, which means attack. Put the other two d6 dice in a pool called reserve, which means defense. The book calls it success, which really confuses me, so I’m going to say success attack every time I talk about it. Here are some example actions the success attack dice are used for: throwing a punch in a boxing match, getting away from pursuers during a chase, and charming a guard. The two reserve, defending dice, are used for actions like: dodging that punch in the boxing match, for not being charmed by someone, and for anything that protects your own safety. Together, the success attack and reserve defense for your turn are called your attitude.
If your success attack roll is higher than your opponent’s reserve defense roll, then they failed to dodge and you landed that blow. If your success attack roll is lower than your opponent’s reserve defense, then they dodged well and your punch missed.
It works the other way, too. If your reserve defense roll is higher than your opponent’s success attack, then you dodged and their punch missed. If your reserve roll is lower than your opponent’s success attack, your dodge was too slow and their punch hit you in the face. These are called positive and negative margins. Your margin is capped by your skill and specialization, just like when you roll outside of combat.
Spleen in Ecryme is a character’s driving fear. Ideal is a character’s motivating hope. Spleen and ideal normally give you one more dice for rolls made outside of combat. In combat, they still give you one more dice. The four dice you roll goes up to five. Drop the highest dice if your spleen applies. Drop the lowest dice if your ideal applies.
Injuries in Ecryme are called impacts. A character in Ecryme can be impacted in three ways: physically, socially, and mentally. Physical impacts are wounds, such as a cut, bruise, or burn. For example, a duel can use the fencing skill and impact your physical body. Mental impacts include discouragement, traumatic stress, despair, and insanity. For example, a mental attack from someone with the special cephalic abilities could impact you. Or you could witness something distressing related to your spleen or ideal that hurts you deep in your heart. Social impacts could be a fall in popularity, a loss of reputation, being discredited and no longer believed, or losing a role title. For example a debate can use the quibbling skill and impact your social standing and reputation.
There are four ranks of impacts. From least to most serious, these ranks are: superficial, light, serious, and major. A combat margin is the difference between one character’s success attack and their target’s reserve defense. The combat margin translates into the impact. If the combat margin is zero, you and your opponent bounce off each other, neither landing a blow. A combat margin of one and two causes a superficial impact, like a scratch or a bruise. A combat margin of three and four cause a light impact, like being stunned or getting a nose bleed. A combat margin of five and six cause a serious impact, like breaking a bone or losing a tooth. Having a serious impact gives all of your rolls negative two. Your conductor might tell you that your character now has a negative trait as an after effect of a serious injury, for example a limp from your broken leg if it was a physical fight, or your face on a wanted poster if it was a social confrontation. A combat margin of seven and eight cause a major impact. Major impacts are life threatening and instantly incapacitating. You can’t fight any more. All rolls are at minus four. Major impacts always leave an after effect. Also, you gain a new spleen, a motivating fear. Depending on the situation, it’s possible for a major impact to make your character lose sight of their ideal, their driving purpose. Your character is out of the game if they either get two major impacts or one impact above eight.
Hit points. Ecryme doesn’t technically have hit points, but you can’t take an unlimited number of impacts. Sort of like hit points, or tally marks, you should keep track of how many of each level of impact you’ve taken. Superficial, light, serious, and major. The fifth superficial impact you take becomes a light impact. The fourth light impact you take is a serious impact. The third serious impact you take becomes a major impact. The second major impact you take removes your character from the game. For physical impacts that means death or a coma, for mental impacts that means insanity or a coma, and for social impacts that means banishment.
Armor. If you’re wearing armor, the injury you receive is one level less severe. For example, a major impact would become a serious impact from your armor. Armor can’t reduce the impact to zero, so you’ll still take at least a superficial injury. The disadvantage to wearing armor is that it’s heavy, so you take a negative four penalty on every physical dice roll.
Effect in Ecryme is like a damage bonus in other games. Effect is a modifier to the impact of your success attack or reserve defense because of situational circumstances. Some examples are having the high ground during a sword duel, having a sword during a sword duel, knocking a chair down into your opponent’s path, and having the sun at your back. If your character has a weapon, that weapon might have an effect number. Weapons don’t affect the success attack or reserve defense rolls themselves, just the impact of the rolls.
Page 244 has a table of the different weapons and their effects. Bare hand fighting and improvised weapons have an effect of plus zero. A staff, cestus, sling, cudgel, truncheon, and razor blade have the effect of plus one. A bow and arrow, chain, dagger, knife, and dirk have the effect of plus two. A crossbow, sword, spear, pike, axe, mace, and pistol have an effect of plus three. A flail, battleaxe, halberd, and musket have an effect of plus four. Since I’m talking about weapons, I’ll mention that ranged weapons can’t be reloaded during hand to hand combat. Also, if you’re firing at something far away or a moving target or your visibility is reduced, page 248 lists how much the difficulty increases by. The extra difficulty is usually around plus two.
Here is an example of the effect number increasing the impact during combat. Eugene has a fencing skill of four and a fencing sword that has a plus three effect. His fencing skill being four means Eugene’s maximum success attack margin is four. Eugene rolls a four, five, three, and two. He puts the four dice and five dice and his fencing skill of four into his success attack. Four plus five plus four is thirteen success attack. He puts the three and two dice and fencing skill of four into reserve defense. Three plus two plus four is nine reserve defense. The opponent has a nine success attack, so with a margin of zero, the opponent misses Eugene. The opponent only has a reserve defense of five. Eugene’s success attack was thirteen. Thirteen from Eugene’s success attack minus five from the opponent’s reserve defense equals a margin of eight. But Eugene’s fencing skill is only four, so the margin is capped at four. A margin of four would be a light impact. But this is when the fencing sword with its effect of three comes in. The margin goes up by three, from four a light impact to seven a major physical impact.
What if you’re unable to hit one another? Ecryme’s combat system doesn’t let things stagnate. The difference in reserve defense carries over from one round of combat to the next, applying to the next round’s success attack. If you successfully reserve defended by two last round, that two gets added to your next round’s success attack.
Here’s an example. Eugene rolls four d6 for a round of combat and get six, five, three, and one. Eugene puts the three dice and one dice and his fencing skill of four into his success attack. Three plus one plus four equals eight success attack. Eugene puts the six dice and the five dice and his fencing skill of four into his reserve defense. Six plus five plus four equals fifteen. The opponent has a ten for success attack and also a ten in reserve defense. Eugene’s success attack of eight doesn’t get a positive margin on his opponent’s reserve defense of ten, so Eugene’s attack doesn’t hit. The opponent’s success attack of ten doesn’t get a positive margin on Eugene’s reserve defense of fifteen, so the opponent also doesn’t hit Eugene. But things don’t just stagnate. Next round, the opponent will get a bonus of plus two to their success attack because they had a two reserve defense margin on the eight success attack coming at them. Eugene would have gotten a bonus of five because his reserve defense of fifteen was five higher than the opponent’s success attack of ten, but his fencing skill is four so it’s capped at four.
Ecryme applies the combat rules to arguments, too. There’s an example on page 252 with success attack and reserve defense, where the quibbling skill is used just like how the fencing skill was used in that previous combat example.
Surprise. If you’re taken by surprise in Ecryme, you can only roll reserve defense. Roll just two d6, and apply them both to reserve defense.
Healing. How quickly you recover depends on how badly you were injured. From least to most serious, the impact ranks are: superficial, light, serious, and major. There’s a table on page 254 with the level of impact, the roll penalty, the recovery time without intervention, recovery time with intervention, and intervention difficulty. If a character has a superficial injury, there is no rolling penalty. They will recover within a day without intervention. If an intervention is done, it needs to be made within an hour and takes an hour to do, and has a difficulty level of ten. Light impact injuries have no rolling penalty. Characters recover from light impact injuries after a week on their own. If an intervention is made, it has to be done within a day of the injury and takes a day to do. The difficulty level is twelve. Serious impact injuries give you a negative two modifier to all your rolls. They sometimes cause an after effect, which never goes away. You recover from the serious impact injury enough to not have a negative two modifier after a month. If someone is going to intervene to help you, that intervention has a difficulty of fourteen, must be done within the first week, and takes a week to do. Major impact injuries make all your rolls negative four, have a difficulty of sixteen to treat, the treatment has to be done within a month and takes a month to do, and without intervention the major injury stops giving you a minus four to all rolls in one year. The intervention has the chance of removing the after effect, otherwise a major impact injury recovered on its own without intervention always leaves you with an after effect.
Helping allies. If you help an ally with a task, and how you help makes sense, then the difficulty decreases by two. Environmental conditions can also help decrease a task difficulty by two. For example, if when you’re trying to repair a vehicle you’re doing it in a workshop, the workshop environmental condition decreases the repair difficulty by two.
You can build an Ecryme character three ways: point buy, questionnaire, or archetype. Point buy means that you have positive two points in any free form word traits of your choosing, and thirty points distributed as you like in the fifteen skills. One skill point can buy you a specialization in any skill that has at least five points. Starter level characters don’t have any skills above five points. You’ll also write a spleen and an ideal on your character sheet, a character name, and some equipment. That concludes the point buy method of character creation.
The questionnaire method of character creation is like a personality quiz. You are asked a multiple choice question about your character, and the answer gives you a point in a skill. One example question is, what was your character’s favorite past time when they were a kid? If you answer going to the theater or opera with friends, you get a point in creativity. If you answer snatching candy from marketplace stalls, you get a point in guile. If it was building models, you get a point in anthropo-mechanology. If as a kid, your character chased rats for fun, they get a point in athletics. If your character’s childhood past time was listening to phonograph records telling adventure stories, they get a point in traversology. And lastly, if your character wandered around town for fun as a kid, they get a point in urbanotechnology. The questionnaire is pretty detailed. It’s sixteen pages long and goes from page 207 to 222 in the rule book. The rule book says to pick your six favorite of the twelve questions, and only answer those six questions, not all twelve.
The third way to get a character sheet in Ecryme is to use one of the premade ones. These are called archetypes. Here’s a list of them all. There’s an aeronaut who is great at the driving skill and specializes in airships. There’s a deaf archivist whose ideal is to archive all the flora and fauna of the ecryme, and has a five in ecrymology. There is a duelist whose spleen is that they despise a lack of action, who has a five in fencing and a specialization in the foil. One archetype is a stilt walker who is as comfortable on stilts as they are on foot, who has a five in athletics. There is an ambitious metropolite who has gained favor and power through schemes but also upset some high ranking officials, and they have a five in quibbling with a specialization in blackmail. Another archetype is the raconteur daughter of a nobleman stripped of his title, whose spleen is to get revenge for her father, and has a five in urbanotechnology with a specialization in intimate details about the rich and powerful. Another premade character is a degreaser, a former military officer who was court marshalled for mistreating war prisoners. They have a five in shooting and specializations in both the musket and cannon. Another archetype is the snoop, a person who tracks government officials who have gotten rich selling state property. They have a five in urbanotechnology with specializations in one city location and two ministries of government in that city. There is a map maker with a five in traversology. Philippe is a premade character who is an Icarian, like Icarus who flew too close to the sun, who flies a glider for a specialization in the driving skill. There are also more archetypes, premade characters, including the rich merchant, the acrobatic worker, the pontiff, the ecryme diver, the renegade scientist, the courtesan, the stitch lord, the line worker, the fugitive, the syndicalist scholar, and the ecryme flower harvester.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Ecryme in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Ecryme in action. We encourage you to find the Ecryme rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Dante, Muse and Sofia get an invite to a garden party hosted by the enigmatic Mr. Darcy, where shenanigans involving giant robots fighting and lighting fast betrothals occur. It really was handled with Pride and Extreme Prejudice.
Dante, Muse and Sofia get an invite to a garden party hosted by the enigmatic Mr. Darcy, where shenanigans involving giant robots fighting and lighting fast betrothals occur. It really was handled with Pride and Extreme Prejudice.
This Old Guild Hall is an actual play podcast of Cottages and Cerberus where Stewart and Sofia are hired to fix up the New Inthera Guild Hall by defeating dangerous monsters and making cozy objects.
This Old Guild Hall is an actual play podcast of Cottages and Cerberus where Stewart and Sofia are hired to fix up the New Inthera Guild Hall by defeating dangerous monsters and making cozy objects.
Welcome to a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. This is our rules discussion where we discuss the rules in the past few games we’ve played, for February 2026. We’ll discuss the tabletop roleplaying games The Walking Dead, Blade Runner, LURPS, The One Ring, Never Stop Blowing Up, Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, and Sad Vampire Boyfriend.
Join the Firebreathing Kittens as they play Sad Vampire Boyfriend! In The Undrinkables our three Firebreathing Kittens Queenie, Kamos, and Meru find themselves contracted as security members for the 47th National Remembrance Festival. As they peruse the colorful shops and stalls they start to get a sinking feeling that all is not as it seems. On a quest to investigate they find adventure, cows, and… hey is that blood? And why does it smell so good?!
Join the Firebreathing Kittens as they play Sad Vampire Boyfriend! In The Undrinkables our three Firebreathing Kittens Queenie, Kamos, and Meru find themselves contracted as security members for the 47th National Remembrance Festival. As they peruse the colorful shops and stalls they start to get a sinking feeling that all is not as it seems. On a quest to investigate they find adventure, cows, and… hey is that blood? And why does it smell so good?!
Bee Plus Students is an actual play podcast of Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, following Meg, Queenie, and Muse as they uncover a deadly cosmetics plot and insect impostors.
Bee Plus Students is an actual play podcast of Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, following Meg, Queenie, and Muse as they uncover a deadly cosmetics plot and insect impostors.
How To Play Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls game at home.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- D3 minus 1
- Stats
- Checks
- Abilities
- Empowering abilities
- Perks
- Moods
- Movement rules
- Combat
- Going all out
- Status effects
- Temporary hit points
- Dying
- Healing
- Daily routines
- Clubs
- Building a character
Game category. Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls is a tactical grid tabletop roleplaying game themed around the topic of magical girls. Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica are some examples. Although the genre is called magical girl, you don’t have to role play as a female character to play this game. Sailor Moon has Tuxedo Mask, Cardcaptor Sakura has Syaoran Li, there is even Magical Girl Ore. The genre is about how a regular school kid meets a small cute magical creature such as a cat, a winged bear, et cetera, which leads to her ability to transform and use magical powers. Like how glasses prevent people from realizing Clark Kent is Superman in the superhero genre, the costume change into her magical girl alter ego protects her secret identity, letting her keep her daily routine of a normal school life. Fighting evil by moonlight, attending classes by daylight. In Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, each magical girl has an aspect, sort of like a class in other games, and your specialized abilities from that aspect let you do different things in combat than your team mates. To play this game, everyone should have some sort of way to look at a grid that is twenty squares left to right and fifteen squares top to bottom. When combat starts, magical girls draw half as many cards as their smarts stat rounded down. You spend cards to use and then further empower your abilities. To use an ability, roll as many six sided dice as you have in your stat, dividing the result by two and subtracting one. So ones and twos give you plus zero, threes and fours give you plus one, and fives and sixes give you plus two. To empower your ability, spend additional cards. Empowerment gives a bonus to the ability’s number of dice rolled, area it effects, or duration, based on the value of the card you spend. Apart from combat, there are also mechanics for your daily life, where how you roleplay to balance magical girl combat with attending classes and extracurricular clubs will affect your mood and your report card.
D3 minus 1. This game uses standard six sided dice to generate zeroes, ones, or twos, to use from each dice rolled. To get a zero, one, or two from a six sided dice, you will roll the dice, divide by two, then subtract one. So if you rolled a one or a two, the result is zero. If you rolled a three or a four, the result is one. If you rolled a five or a six, the result is two. The game calls this the three sided result. In this game, every time you round a number, round down. Numbers can’t go negative in Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, including hit points.
Stats. Each magical girl has stats you will use in checks to see if your character accomplishes or fails at what they try to do. These stats are power, style, smarts, guts, and spirit. Power is how strong you are and how much damage you do. A jock who plays sports is an example of a high power character. Style is your speed, agility, and if you can succeed at things that need finesse. Style is your movement speed, unless it’s less than four, and then your movement speed is at least four. Smarts is how intelligent your magical girl is. The honors student is a good example of a character with high smarts. Each magical girl can use their smarts stat number of abilities from their aspect and from the non-aspect abilities list. At the start of combat, each magical girl draws as many cards as half their smarts score rounding down, with a minimum of one. Your smarts number is also your maximum hand size, how many cards you can hold before discarding. Guts is how much damage your magical girl can take. Guts tends to be a higher number for no-nonsense type characters. Each magical girl starts with ten plus one half of their guts score of hit points. When you gain milestones, guts determines how many hit points you gain with the milestone. Spirit is the range of your magical abilities. You can affect things as many squares away from yourself on the battle grid as your spirit number. A moody sullen character might have low spirit while a cheerleader might have high spirit.
Checks. When succeeding or failing at what your character is trying to do would have an important impact on the story, your game master will ask you to check to see if it works. Roll as many dice as your have in the appropriate stat. For example if you’re trying to leap a long distance, you would look at your number in the style stat, three, and that’s how many dice you would roll, three dice. Because Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls uses a d3 minus one system, your result from rolling dice could range between zero and twice the number of your stat. For example if you roll three dice and get one, two, one, that’s a result of zero. If you roll three dice and get four, three, four, each dice contributed one so that’s a result of three overall. If you roll three dice and get five, six, five, each dice contributed two so that’s a result of six overall. So you can see how the highest result you can get is twice your stat number, and the lowest is zero. Some dice will be zero, some dice will be two, some will be one, so the average result will be around about the stat number.
Abilities. Magical girls can do three types of magical abilities. Universal, aspect, and non-aspect. Abilities can be attacks that reduce the target’s hit points, buffs that apply a positive status effect to a target, debuffs that apply a negative status effect to a target, environmental abilities that impact the battlefield, healing abilities that restore the target’s lost hit points, move abilities that change the target’s location, AoE area of effect abilities that affect multiple squares on the battlefield grid, self abilities that impact only yourself, and team abilities that affect the allies close enough to you. Action abilities can be used on your turn. Reaction abilities are used on someone else’s turn after being triggered by the other person’s action, like by them attacking you. If an ability says the word target, that can mean any character, object, or empty square on the grid that you can see. If it’s blocked and not in your line of sight, you can’t target it. If an area of effect ability would hit allies, you can’t selectively exclude them from the damage. Areas of effect, such as cones and circles, can extend outside the range of your spirit number of grid boxes of influence, as long as they start within it.
Every magical girl can do the universal abilities, which are listed on pages 37 through 39. These univeral abilities include things like a costume transformation into a magical girl, a basic attack, a basic block, a basic dodge, et cetera. All magical girls know all the universal abilities, and can use them by simply spending their action or reaction doing that universal ability. You don’t have to discard a card to do a universal ability.
Your magical girl’s number in the smarts stat lets her know that number of not-universal abilities. These not universal abilities can be either in their aspect or from the non-aspect list. Non-aspect abilities is a list on page 35 and 36 that can be learned by any magical girl. They don’t require your magical girl to take a specialization, called an aspect. But non-aspect abilities do take up one of your finite number of known abilities, and they do need you to discard a card to use them. You can know as many non-aspect and aspect abilities as the number you have for your smarts score. Any magical girl can learn a non-aspect ability, but they aren’t automatically known like the univeral abilities are. Some example non-aspect abilities are shields up, decoy, healing touch, spin attack, and surprise. Non-aspect abilities are different than universal abilities because they take up one of your finite number of known abilities and cost a card to use.
Each magical girl has an aspect, which is sort of like a class in other tabletop roleplaying games. Aspect abilities can only be learned by magical girls who have that specialization. The aspects are fire, ice, water, lightning, earth, wind, time, and butterfly. Each aspect has seven or so abilities in that category. For example the fire aspect has abilities like cauterize, rocket jump, the floor is lava, etc. The ice aspect has abilities like chill out, snow cone, swirling bizzard, snow clone, etc. The water aspect has abilities like fog, mistform, tsunami, osmosis, etc. The lightning aspect has abilities like chain lightning, energize, lightning bolt, flash bang, etc. The earth aspect has abilities like entomb, stone skin, earthquake, avalanch, quicksand, etc. The wind aspect has the abilities wind blast, aerodynamic lift, draft, air wall, etc. The time aspect has rewind, hurry up, stasis, time jump, etc. The butterfly aspect has abilities like mesmerize, iridescent wings, metamorphosis, butterfly swarm, etc. To use an aspect ability, you first discard a card from your hand.
Empowering abilities. Some abilities have text on them that says they do more when they’re empowered. There are three ways to empower a card: how many dice are rolled which can increase how much damage it does, its size like affecting a larger area, and its duration like how many extra turns the effect could last. Abilities that have multiple ways to be empowered let you pick which way you want to empower them. For example if the text says size and duration, you pick which one. Normally when you cast an aspect or non-aspect ability, you spend a card. To use an ability’s empowered effect, spend more cards after that first card.
Each empowerment effect has a cost. That cost isn’t the number of cards you need to spend, but instead is the number of empowerment points needed. The empowerment points you gain for the card depends on its number value, from two at the lowest to face cards to ace high. There’s a table on page thirteen showing all the cards and how many empowerment points you get for spending them. Cards two through five give you only two empowerment points, and are described with words like dainty and cutesy. Spending a six or seven gives you three empowerment points and a modifier word of sparkling or fantastic. Spending cards that are an eight, nine, or ten gives you four empowerment points and a modifier word of super or uber or epic. Spending a jack or queen gives you five empowerment points and a modifer word of hyper or mega. Spending a king gives you six empowerment points and the modifier word of ultra. If you have an ace and spend it, that’s the ultimate bonus, seven.
Add the modifier word from your card onto your ability. For example, a player could empower a fire blast with the queen of hearts to make it become a mega fire blast with five more damage dice to roll. You’re encouraged to loudly announce the new name.
If you have enough points, abilities can be empowered more than once. Here is an example. You are casting an ability with a cone three area of effect. It has the empowerment text on it quote, “Empowerable x 1 Size 3”. That means for for every three points of empowerment, the cone size increases by one. You discard a king, generating six empowerment points. You spend the first three points to increase the cone from size three to four, and the next three points to increase the cone from size four to five.
Perks. Perks are bonus traits your magical girl gets. There are three types: combat perks, ability perks, and character perks. Every magical girl starts with one perk from each category, so one combat perk, one ability perk, and one character perk. Here is an example combat perk. It’s called diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and it doesn’t have any prerequisites. When you spend a diamond card to empower an ability, you get to roll an extra dice for the check made for the ability, because diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Here is an example ability perk. It’s called undodgeable attack. You add the word undodgeable before one of your attack abilities. For example if you pick the ability wind blast, it would permanently become undodgeable wind blast. Any target you wind blast can’t use dodge against it. Here is an example character perk. It’s called fleet footed, and it doesn’t have any prerequistes. If your magical girl is fleet footed, their movement speed is increased by two. You start with one perk from each category.
Moods. When you first create your magical girl, she starts with a neutral mood. Neutral moods don’t give you any bonuses or penalties. The mood scale goes from negative two at the lowest, to zero which is neutral, to positive two at the highest. The GM will tell you if your magical girl’s mood increases, which might happen if in the game you eat at a restaurant, go shopping, etc good thing. The GM will also tell you if your magical girl’s mood decreases, which might happen if in the game you miss sleep, miss a meal, deal with corruption or monsters, or etc bad thing. On Monday mornings, your mood resets one step back towards neutral. The abilities that change your mood during a battle are temporary and wear off when combat ends. At the end of the fight, you return to whatever your mood was at the start of it.
One example of a positive mood is happy. When you’re happy, any time you would make a spirit check, you roll an extra dice. Another example positive mood is bold. When you’re feeling bold, negative status effects end one round sooner than they normally would. Here is an example of a negative mood. When you’re angry, every smarts check you make has one less dice. Here’s a second example of a negative mood. When you’re tired, your movements are two squares shorter.
When the GM tells you your mood increases, you pick a positive mood to take and its benefit. If your mood increases again, you can go to the advanced form of that mood if there is one, denoted by two right arrows and a new word, or you can gain a second mood. That’s the most you can have, either one advanced mood or two basic moods. This also works the same way for negative moods.
Here is an example of advancing a mood. Your magical girl was already feeling the positive mood of encouraged. Your GM tells you that your character’s mood improves again. You can choose to either take the advancement to encourage that is called being inspired, or you could take any basic mood, like happy or excited. Regardless of which you pick, if your GM tells you your mood improves again, nothing happens. Two steps up or down is the maximum.
Movement rules. Style is your movement speed, unless it’s less than four, and then your movement speed is at least four. Everyone playing Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls should be able to look at a grid twenty squares left to right and fifteen squares top to bottom. Imagine that you’re looking top down at your character. Every grid is a five foot square they can move forward, backward, left, right, and diagonally into. Your character can technically jump up from the two dimensional grid, moving half as many grid squares in the up direction as they can horizontally. For example if your movement speed is four, you can jump one half of four is two grid squares up into the air. Magical girls are magical, and they can double jump, triple jump, etc as an action, but if you don’t land on solid ground by the end of your turn, you’ll start falling at a rate of four squares per turn. You never have to walk to pick up your weapon or spend an action on that. A magical girl cannot be disarmed. If separated from her magical weapon, it disappears and reappears in her hand ready to go. There is no mechanical difference between any weapon types, but you’re welcome to flavor your magical girl as holding one if you’d like.
Here is a list of movement rules. If your character is falling next to a wall, you can wall slide to slow your fall from four squares per turn for falling to one square per turn for wall sliding. If the environment is reducing your mobility, like rough terrain, your movement speed is halved. If you try to vertically go upward in rough terrain, half of a half is a quarter. For example moving upward through rough terrain reduces your movement speed from four to one. Swimming doesn’t reduce your movement speed, but you can only hold your breath for as many turns as twenty multiplied by the result of a guts roll. After you run out of breath turns, you start taking one point of damage per turn until you can breathe again, or until you die from drowning if your health reaches zero. More movement rules. A magical girl can fall prone anytime they want, and can crawl at half speed to fit in narrow spaces. The game master might impose a penalty on you if you try to fight from a prone position, and you can’t use any abilities unless you’re standing up. It takes one action to stand up.
Combat. Combat is done on a grid twenty squares left to right and fifteen squares top to bottom. You can move up, down, left, right, diagonal, the opposite diagonal, et cetera in any direction on the grid squares.
Turn order. When players and enemies are fighting, it all happens really fast of course, but to hear everyone’s contribution in an orderly way, officially everyone takes turns. At the beginning of an encounter, all characters make a style check. The highest gets to go first in the turn order, and the lowest has to go last. Here’s an example style check. Your style number is five. You roll five six sided dice, also called d6. You get a 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Using the d3 minus one dice scoring sytem, what matters is the number that shows on the dice divided by two minus one. So your one and two add zero to your score, your three and four give you one each, and the five gives you two. Your total score is four. The enemy’s score was three, so with a score of four you go before the enemy does.
On your turn, your character will be able to talk, and will be able to make two actions and one reaction. If you move, that takes up one of your two actions. If you don’t move, then you can do two actions on your turn. For example you can move and use an ability, or you can not move, and be able to use an ability and then use a second ability. Another example is that you can choose to move twice instead of using any abilities.
Going all out. If you want, at the start of your turn you can declare that you’re going all out. If you go all out, you don’t get a reaction this turn, but do get a third action.
Drawing cards in combat. When combat starts, magical girls draw half as many cards as their smarts score rounded down. You also draw a card at the start of your turn. Your maximum hand size is your smarts score. For example if your smarts is three, if you have four cards in your hand at the end of your turn, you have to discard one. At the end of combat, you’ll discard any cards you haven’t used yet, so you can’t stockpile them from one encounter to another.
Here’s an example attack against an inanimate object. It’s the start of your turn, so you draw a card. Your goal is to blast down a door so you can save the day. The door has a damage reduction, DR, of five, and has three hit points, HP. You raise your magical staff and prepare a magical girl attack, using the first action of the two actions you get on your turn. This is the basic attack ability, from the list of universal abilities, so you don’t have to spend a card to use it. Basic attack says, quote, “Use your magic to strike at your target. You roll one fewer dice for each square between you and your target.” You’re standing right next to the door, so you roll for power, rolling six dice. The dice show a one, a two, a three, a four, a five, and a six. That translates to results of zero, zero, one, one, two, and two. The sum is six total. The door’s damage reduction of five means one damage gets through, reducing the door’s three hit points down to two. You don’t quite break it. The door still has two hit points. But you still have a second action on your turn. You raise your staff and roll a second time. The dice show three threes, a four, and two sixes. Threes and fours on the dice mean one, and sixes become two, so that’s eight damage. The door’s damage reduction reduces the eight down to three damage, but it’s enough. The remaining two hit points of the door are depleted. You break down the door to save the day. Also, you still have the card you drew this turn, and your reaction left. You can use that card to cast a reaction ability you have as part of your list of aspect abilities. Keeping your card and reaction ready to go is a smart choice who knows what’s beyond that door about to come at you.
Status effects. Some abilities have positive or negative ongoing effects. Positive effects can end whenever you want. Negative effects will say how long they last. On going effects that say they last a specific number of turns end at the end of the turn, after your actions are done, not when the turn starts. Some examples of status effects are blinded, charged up, and pacified. Blinded characters have a 50% miss chance on their attacks. Charged up characters get maximum results on the next check they make. Pacified characters can’t take actions that would harm others. There’s also paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, rooted, silenced, slowed, stasised, stunned, terrified, and unconscious.
Temporary hit points. If a perk or ability grants you temporary hit points, those get used up before reducing hit points. Temporary hit points don’t stack; if you are getting more temproary hit points when you already have some, the new number overwrites your previous temporary hit point number. When the encounter ends, temporary hit points go away. You don’t get to start a new encounter with temporary hit points boosting you from the last encounter you were in.
If an effect raises your guts score, your hit points do go up. But be careful, because when the effect wears off you don’t just go back to normal, you lost as many hit points as you had gained, even if that reduction now reduces you to zero.
Dying. When one of your five stats reaches zero, your magical girl stops being able to do any actions and helplessly can’t defend herself. You can role play each zero differently depending on which stat reached zero. If power reaches zero, the magical girl is too weak to move. If style reaches zero your joints lock up. If smarts reaches zero, the magical girl is unconscious. If guts reaches zero, her body hurts too much to move. If spirit reaches zero, you’re too depressed to force yourself to act. If hit points reach zero, the magical transformation ends and you revert back to being a normal girl. All status effects drop off, which is nice. But if you take any damage in your school girl form, you could die or permanently lose your powers, so, you might consider using your newly status effect free normal legs to run to safety while your friends finish the fight. A good game master will give you a non player character to control if your player character dies in a session.
Healing. Magical girls inherently heal one hit point per minute out of combat or one hit point every twenty turns in combat. This usually heals your character up to full hit points in between combats.
Daily routines. Ultra Hyper Fantastic Magical girls has daily routines. There’s a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday breakdown of the week, with three hour time chunks every day, that your magical girl spends in classes, at lunch, back in classes, doing extracurricular activites, having free time, eating dinner, or sleeping. Every weekday, you have four classes to attend. In the morning there’s PE and math, and in the afternoon there’s science and writing. If you are absent from your activities, that has consequences. Missing class means you get a failing grade for that day of the week. Missing your club for the day means your mood decreases one step. Missing sleep decreases your mood one step. If you do attend class, PE, math, science, and writing each has a different stat check you make for the class. For example, in PE you have to roll style and power. Add your style and power stat checks together and add five bonus to your roll. At the end of the week, you get a report card that adds up the check reults you got for each class for each day. That number determines your letter grade. For example, Monday through Friday getting a 13, 16, 14, 17, and 12 in math would add up to a 72, which is a C minus. If you want to improve youre score, you can study during your free time in the evening, which improves your bonus on your roll from plus five to plus fifteen.
Clubs. Every magical girl is in one club that you pick when you create your character. These clubs include cheerleading, chess, cooking, drama, karate, sports, and yearbook. Every day after class but before free time, there’s a block of time in the day for attending your club. If you complete the club’s challenge, you get that bonus listed there. You’ll face a challenge by flipping over a card. The number on the card determines the challenge. You can see the challenges listed in the GM rule book. They’re intentionally left out of the player’s rule book. I’ll just give a few examples so you can get the idea. For example if your magical girl is in the cheerleading club and the card flipped is a five, that’s a pom-pom panic. You need to do a style check to perform a cheer routine, throwing and catching your pom-poms in the air in sync with your teammates. If you get a six or higher, you succeed. The routine looks and feels amazing, and your mood increases by one. If you get a five or lower, your pom-pom hits a pigeon midair, bringing the team’s routine to a screeching halt, literally. Your mood decreases by one. Here’s another example. If you’re in the chess club and draw a two, the challenge is called pawn stars. During the chess match, you have the opportunity to promote a pawn. Make a smarts check. If you get a seven or higher, you promoted your pawn to the piece you needed to win the game. Your mood increases by two steps. If you got a six or lower, you promoted your pawn to a queen without thinking, and accidentally cause a stalemate. Your mood decreases by one step. You’ll notice that those two examples were from the cards five and two. If you flip a face card during a challenge, you’ll have multiple checks to make, a multi part challenge. The first two checks give a bonus or penalty to the third check, which determines the outcome. If you succeed at a multi step challenge, you might increase your mood and also either learn a new ability or gain a new perk.
Building a character. All magical girls start out with 5 in each stat. Choose two stats; one stat will get a plus two starting bonus and the other stat will get a plus one starting bonus. Next, choose an aspect. The aspect will give your magical girl some stat modifications, with most aspects reducing one stat by two and increasing another stat by two, to specialize you to fit the flavor of that aspect. For example, the ice aspect gives you plus two to power, but as a cool person with a heart of ice, you get minus two to your spirit. The aspect also gives you a passive ability. For example, the water aspect’s passive ability says any time a magical girl with the water aspect assists an ally, her checks are automatically maxxed. Your smarts stat is the number of abilities you can know from your aspect abilities list and the non-aspect abilities list. Every magical girl starts with one perk from each category, so one combat perk, one ability perk, and one character perk.
When you gain milestones in Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls, you will gain more perks, hit points, and stats. Every odd milestone gets you a new character perk, every even milestone gets you a new ability perk, and every third milestone gets you a new combat perk.
Here is an example of a character build straight from the rule book. We’re making a character sheet for a magical girl named Mox. First, all magical girls start with fives in power, style, smarts, guts, and spirit. Next, choose an aspect for your magical girl. The example aspect is butterfly, which increases spirit from five to seven, and decreases guts from five to three. Then all magical girls get to pick one stat that gets a plus two bonus and another stat that gets a plus one bonus. For this example character, they chose style to get plus two, from five to seven, and spirit to get plus one, from seven to eight. Because this is a milestone one starter character, using the hit point table, with three guts and milestone one the magical girl has twenty one hit points. Next we determine abilities. Mox knows all the universal abilities, all magical girls do. Mox also knows five more abilities because Mox’s smarts is five. These five can come from the butterfly aspect, or from the non aspect list. They chose magic missile, blink, mesmerize, blood nectar, and healing touch. Each aspect also gives the magical girl a passive ability. For the butterfly aspect, the passive ability is called flutter. The next step is to choose perks. As a starter character at milestone one, Mox has one perk in each category. The combat perk they chose is called lucky, the ablity perk they chose is called dodgy, and the character perk is called wing-a-ling. The very last step of character creation is to pick a club. They pick drama club. Voila, that’s a completed example character.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls in action. We encourage you to find the Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
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Pulled through time and space to the Prancing Pony, Newson and Wilford race to save Tobald Heatherfoot from the curse of the Barrow-downs. An actual play of The One Ring, the official Lord of the Rings role-playing game.
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How To Play The Walking Dead
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for The Walking Dead. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own The Walking Dead game at home.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Skills
- Pushing and stress
- How to attack
- Armor
- Cover
- Moving
- Dueling
- Sneak attacks
- Brawling
- Leadership
- Swarms
- Threat levels
- Single walker attack
- Fighting a swarm
- Sacrifice someone
- Relieving stress
- Dying
- Healing
- Helping allies
- Jargon
- Building a character
Game category. This is the official tabletop roleplaying game of the famous TV show, The Walking Dead. You are role playing as a character in a world where society has collapsed. An unidentified malady has spread to all living people, infecting everyone. Anyone who dies, regardless of the cause of the death, is reanimated into what is called a Walker, an undead shambling corpse driven by a compulsion to consume living flesh. If one of the living gets scratched or bitten by a walker, they will succumb, quickly becoming one if the bitten limb is not amputated. Your character can kill an individual Walker, but never enough of them to make a dent in how many there are in the world. It’s not safe out there. You might be able to clear the Walkers from a small haven, such as a roof top, so you can sleep. At your haven you can store food, water, medicine, and other resources, maybe collaborating with a close knit group of fellow survivors. But in a world with no law enforcement, can you trust the people you meet? They might be robbers eyeing your limited food, or murderers, or cannibals, or could simply make too much noise and attract a Walker swarm, a gathering of the undead so numerous that they overrun anything in their path. How long will you survive in this roleplaying game before you become one of… the walking dead. To describe the mechanics in five sentences, this is a game where you will roll six sided dice, also called d6. You succeed when you see at least one six in the dice you rolled. You can push to re roll failures, which adds stress dice. If you get a one on a stress dice, something goes wrong. Weapons deal a set number of damage depending on the weapon, and all characters have three hit points.
Skills. When your character tries to accomplish something in the game world, you might roll dice to see if they are successful or not. A good game master will call for a dice roll any time the character failing could increase tension, make the situation much worse, or make the game more exciting. How do you know how many dice you will roll? Find the skill that best fits what you’re trying to do, and the attribute associated with that skill. The number next to the skill, plus the number next to the attribute, are how many dice you get to roll.
Here is an example skill roll. Rick is trapped, surrounded by Walkers on all sides with no way out. Glenn’s player wants to help Rick. She proposes that Glenn sneak through the Walker filled streets, find a car without being detected, hot wire it, and drive it back to Rick to pick him up. Because the first part of her plan is sneaking, and because if that fails that dramatically changes the outcome of this plan, the game master calls for a roll. Glenn’s player looks at his character sheet. The number three is written next to the stealth skill, and it’s one of three skills under the agility attribute, which has the number four. With three dice from the stealth skill and four dice from the agility attribute, Glenn’s player rolls seven dice total. There are very good odds that at least one of them will be a six. The player rolls and the result is… two sixes! Excellent. Glenn’s stealthy sneaking through the streets was successful, he found a car with no Walkers around. For the extra six, the game master rewards Glenn’s player with a little something extra, such as asking her what color the car is. She says orange. Sweet. The next step will be hot wiring it.
Pushing and stress. In The Walking Dead, a roll isn’t necessarily over if you don’t get any sixes. You can choose to push. Pushing is when you pick up all those dice, add one point of stress to your character, and roll again. For each point of stress, you add one more special dice to the pool. This special stress dice could be a different color than the other dice, or have different symbols on its faces, or can be rolled after the other dice on its own, or could be rolled in a different location on your table, etc. Anyway, to push, you pick up all those failed dice and re roll them, and also re roll as many extra dice called stress dice as you have points of stress. This is another chance to see a six. If you get at least one six as a result, congratulations, your skill roll succeeded. From now on, you’ll roll as many extra dice on all rolls as you have points of stress. If you’ve pushed once, you have one stress, and roll one extra dice. If you’ve pushed twice, you have two stress, and roll two extra dice. Now here’s where keeping track of which dice are the stress dice matter. If you get a one on specifically a stress dice, not your regular dice, then the one on the stress dice means you’ve quote, “messed up”. When you mess up, the threat level on page seventy nine raises. For example you didn’t notice a Walker until it got close enough to attack you, or you were loud enough to get the attention of a Walker Swarm, etc. Something goes very wrong. Stress stays with you until you do something to relieve the stress. This includes narrating a roleplaying scene with your anchor, narrating a roleplaying scene with another character, and resting. When you sleep a full night’s rest, roll two dice and relieve the lower number of stress.
Here is an example of pushing. Glenn is at the car he found. There aren’t any Walkers around. He’d like to try to hot wire the car, so he can drive it back to where Rick is trapped and rescue him. Hot wiring a car is the tech skill. The player looks at Glenn’s character sheet. There’s a zero written next to the tech skill, uh oh. But the tech skill is under the wits attribute, which Glenn has a four in, whew. Glenn’s player will be rolling four dice. She rolls the four dice and gets… four, one, two, two. Yikes, there aren’t any sixes. Glenn’s not going to be able to hot wire this car because he doesn’t have any tech skills. But wait! She can push! Glenn’s player adds one point of stress to his character sheet. This means all future rolls will be made with one extra dice, a stress dice. She picks up the dice and rolls them, and then rolls one extra dice to represent the stress dice. Three, six, two, one, and the stress dice is a… five! Excellent. She narrates how the first time, the car’s engine turns and sputters, sputters, sputters, and fails to roll over. Glenn was about to give up, rather than risk the noise of the engine attracting Walkers. But then he remembered how he knows, based on his knowledge gathered while working as a pizza delivery driver before the outbreak, that this road is a dead end surrounded by the tall concrete walls of a warehouse. There’s not likely to be many Walkers, kept out by the anti tresspassing architecture. It’s safe to make a bit of noise here. He tries the engine again, symbolically re rolling. And gets that six! The engine rumbles to life, the car starts, and Glenn drives away, off to rescue Rick. Huzzah! Because this is a training guide, let’s also discuss what would have happened if Glenn’s player had gotten that six and also gotten a one on the stress dice. The rule book calls this succeeding and also messing up. Yes, the car would have started. And also, something would have gone terribly wrong in a different aspect. The game master gets to choose how. For example there’s the classic attract a swarm of Walkers result, or the classic you didn’t notice a Walker was about to attack you result. You might run out of bullets, get lost, break an important item, or get injured. Or the GM can do something creative, like, Glenn didn’t know the previous occupant of the car had seen the zombie apocalypse, panicked, and hidden in their trunk, not realizing they didn’t know how to open it. Days trapped in the hot trunk had led to their demise, until they had reawoken, undead, but still trapped. Grumbling in zombie speak, the former car occupant now thumps their head softly into the roof of the trunk, shaken and stirred by Glenn’s speedy driving, as Glenn whips around curves and flies over speed bumps, off to rescue Rick, unaware he’s bringing a Walker companion along for the ride. Depending on the scene and how creative they’re feeling at the moment, the GM might ask the player to pick and describe how they messed up.
How to attack. Attacks in The Walking Dead are basically skill rolls. Your weapon will come from the list of gear. Each weapon gives you a specified number of extra dice you roll, and does a set number of damage if it hits.
Here’s an example attack. Rick is trapped. He’s surrounded by Walkers. His weapon is a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver. You can see the revolver’s stats on page 74 of the rule book. They can target enemies a short distance away, they give the player two extra dice on their ranged attack skill roll, and they deal two damage if they hit. Rick has three in the ranged combat skill and two in the agililty attribute. Three dice from the ranged combat skill plus two dice from the agility attribute plus two dice from the revolver equals seven dice overall. The ranged combat skill says that for every extra six you get, you can increase the damage you deal by one. Rick gets two sixes! That’s great. The Walker he hits takes three damage.
Armor. If you’re wearing armor, when you get attacked, roll as many dice as you have level in armor. For example, metal plate armor has an armor level of eight, so you’d roll eight dice. Each resulting six reduces the damage you take by one. There is a trade off to mobility from wearing armor. For example the metal plate armor reduces all the skill rolls you make that feasibly use mobility by three dice.
Cover. To get behind cover, make a mobility roll. That means rolling your agility attribute plus mobility skill number of dice. Rolling a six means you succeed. If a character is behind cover, enemies firing ranged attacks at them need an extra six to hit. Cover doesn’t affect close combat.
Moving. If you want to increase or decrease the distance between yourself and someone or something, that requires a roll. Mobility is a skill in The Walking Dead. Roll your agility attribute and mobility skill number of dice, and if at least one dice rolls a six, you succeeded.
Dueling. Dueling is the most basic way to fight. There’s one player character and one enemy who isn’t a zombie. Both of you roll dice, as many dice as you have in your combat skill, your attribute, and your weapon bonus. If neither of you rolls a six, then nobody did any damage. If you both roll the same number of sixes, then you both deal your weapon damage to each other. If one of you rolls more sixes, you deal your weapon damage to the other person, and don’t take any. Every extra six past the first one deals one extra damage. If a friend role plays helping you some how, you get an extra dice for your duel. After the first round, you could choose to end the combat and try to accomplish that through roleplaying, or you could keep dueling.
Sneak attacks. If someone is unaware they are being attacked, they don’t roll for that first round of opposed rolls in a duel.
Brawling. If two people gang up on a single target, the lone fighter duels one of the pair and is defenseless against the other. Everyone’s attack for the round happens at the same time. If there are multiple people fighting on each side, you can use the brawling mechanics. A brawl starts with the Game Master, often abbreviated as GM, declaring how far apart everyone is from each other and from objects in the environment, like cover, enemies, etc. Then the GM walks everyone through the six phases in a round. You can do one action per round. This action involves a skill roll, and can be something like a ranged attack, a stealth roll, a mobility roll to move, etc. Drawing your weapon doesn’t take an action. NPCs will say what they’re doing to start each phase. When the GM calls out the phase you want to take your action in, after the NPCs have all said what they will do, say what you want to do and then roll to see if you succeed. The phases are: 1 taking cover, 2 ranged combat, 3 close combat, 4 moving, 5 first aid, and 6 anything else.
Leadership. In a brawl, you have the option of taking the leadership action. Roll your leadership skill plus empathy attribute number of dice. Every six you get is a bonus dice you can give to another player, while telling them what to do, that they can roll if they do what you told them to. Three is the maximum number of leadership dice you can give to a single person.
Swarms. Walkers who are moving around in a group of five or more are called a swarm. The swarm size matters, mechanically, so here’s the definition for it. Five to ten Walkers is a swarm size of one. Eleven to twenty Walkers is a swarm size of two. Twenty one to fifty Walkers is a swarm size of three. Fifty one to a hundred Walkers is a swarm size of four. More than a hundred but less than a thousand Walkers is a swarm size of five. More than a thousand Walkers is a swarm size of six.
Threat levels. The Game Master will declare the threat level publicly to describe settings and at the start of combats. A threat level of zero means you’re in an area that has been cleared of Walkers and are safe for now. A threat level of 1 means there are probably Walkers somewhere around you but not anywhere specifically. They haven’t noticed you and won’t bother you, unless you mess up a skill test, in which case a single Walker might show up for a bite. A threat level of 2 means the Walkers are at defined places on the map that the GM can mark if asked, but they haven’t noticed you yet. When the threat level is 1 or 2, you could try rolling your skills to avoid the Walkers. Examples include stealth to quietly bypass them, or mobility to run away. If you fail, a single Walker might attack you or the threat level will go up. A threat level of 3 means there are Walkers visible, they can see you as much as you can see them, they’re shambling towards you, and all players gain a stress dice. They know you’re there and won’t go away, just standing and waiting for you patiently. Players are limited to only using the skills endure, force, mobility, ranged combat, and stealth. A threat level of 4 means the Walkers are getting pretty close to you. Not arm’s reach, but, they’re coming. Players are limited to only using the skills force, mobility, and ranged combat. A threat level of 5 means they are now within an arm’s reach of you. Their arms. Which they are, in fact, reaching towards you. Players are limited to only using the skills force, close combat, and ranged combat. And lastly a threat level of six means you are surrounded on all sized by Walkers within biting distance. Players are limited to only using the skills force and close combat. Threat levels of three, four, five, and six initiate the swarm fighting mechanics. An example of a threat level is if you try to disguise yourself as a Walker but your disguise breaks down, they’d notice you while within an arm’s reach of you, which is threat level 5 but just like, for you, individually.
There are four ways to increase the threat level. Rolling a one on a stress dice, failing a skill roll intended to avoid Walkers, entering an area that has Walkers in it, and making noise. When a player rolls a one on a stress dice, that is called messing up, and often the GM will say the threat level raises while something else goes wrong, such as friendly fire, injuring yourself, the environment gets worse, running out of ammo, etc.
Single Walker attack. Walkers don’t have hit points, attributes, or skills. When just a single one of them attacks you, make a skill roll of your choice to avoid getting bitten. Which skill you pick will probably depend on the situation. This defense roll doesn’t count as an action in combat, it just happes every time a single Walker goes to attack you. If you pass this skill roll, congratulations, the Walker didn’t make contact with you and due to whatever you did, is no longer threatening you. If you fail this skill roll, uh oh, you will make a roll on the Walker attack table on page 81. That table is pretty diverse, and includes some effects that can immediately kill your character. After rolling on the table, the attack is over and the Walker no longer threatens you. So pass or fail, a single Walker attack is resolved by that skill roll.
Fighting a swarm. Anytime the threat level is three, four, five, or six, you’re going to be fighting a swarm. Like brawls, this combat will be done in rounds. Every round, up to three player characters and or non player characters can take an action. So if there are four of you, or if you have three players and an NPC, remember that sentence during the game. Extra people can help allies and one person can use the leadership skill each round, but only three people can participate adding their successes to the running total for the swarm combat. There are three skill rolls per round, so if you have two player characters, one of you is making two rolls in a round, and the second roll gets two fewer dice. If there’s only one person facing a swarm, the first roll is normal, the second roll gets two fewer dice, and the third roll gets four fewer dice.
Swarm threat. Swarm threat is a number you calculate and keep track of during swarm fights. Swarm threat equals swarm size plus threat level. Each round, three players will do skill rolls and will add together their successes. Any player who fails their individual skill roll receives a single Walker attack. They do another skill roll that is separate from the roll for the round, to see if the single Walker attack hits them or misses.
Here is an example. If the swarm size is three and the threat is four, the players will need to get seven successes in their three skill rolls to win the round.
The round is won if the number of successes reaches the number for the swarm threat. Winning a round will end the fight if the swarm size is three or less. If the swarm size is four, five, or six, then winning a round will reduce the swarm size by one. If you don’t get as many successes as you were hoping for but do get at least half, then you get one free extra success next round. If you don’t get even half as many successes as the swarm threat, which again is the swarm size plus the threat level, then the players lost the round to the Walkers and the GM chooses one of three things. Either the threat level is increased, or the swarm size is increased, or the swarm attacks. If the round is lost and anyone rolled a one on a stress dice, then the GM chooses two things.
The swarm attacking means different things at different threat levels. Below threat level six, it either means a single Walker attack, or a block. A block is when the Walkers have crowded into the escape routes, so mobility and stealth rolls need one extra six to succeed. At threat level six, things go horribly wrong and something called a mass attack happens when the swarm attacks. The GM rolls a random dice to see who’s affected, and that person can’t make the defensive roll, and rolls on the single Walker attack table with no way to avoid it. Every time the swarm attacks, the swarm threat number gets reduced by one afterwards. Eventually the Walkers will move on naturally, if you can hold out that long.
Sacrifice someone. There is a mechanic for sacrificing someone, basically shoving them into the Walker swarm while running in the opposite direction. The two people roll opposed force skill and strength attribute number of dice, and the person who wins is out of the fight while the person who loses has to roll on the Walker attack table on page eighty one. Regardless, that force roll takes up one of the three rolls the party was allowed to make.
Relieving stress. After a roleplaying scene that involves a social interaction with another player character or nonplayer character, a player can tell the Game Master that they relieved stress, and can remove one stress dice. If the scene was with your anchor and lasted an hour of in game time or more, then you can choose to relieve all stress. An anchor can relieve your stress once per session. Relieving stress starts to be important in long term campaigns where you’re using the one healing point per day mechanic, because you don’t get that one healing point a day if you have five or more stress.
Dying. When your character takes three points of damage, they become broken. Broken characters can’t walk, can’t attack, automatically fail all skill rolls, and generally just lay on the ground. Immediately gain one stress and roll on the critical injury table. A broken character that gets hit again, dies.
Critical injuries can come in three levels of lethality: not lethal, potentially lethal after a while, and immediately lethal. Here are three example results from rolling on the critical injury table. If you roll a 1 and then a 1, your character is winded. Being winded isn’t lethal, so you aren’t at risk of dying. You do have a penalty of minus one, meaning one less dice on all your rolls. And this lasts even after you’re not broken anymore, for between one and six hours. Your GM will tell you when you’ve recovered. That was one example. Here’s a second example. If you roll a three and a three, that’s a deep flesh wound. You have a minus two on all your rolls, meaning two fewer dice. The deep flesh wound could be fatal. Your fellow players can make a medicine skill roll to try to stabilize you once a day. If they haven’t succeeded by eight days, then your character dies. Here’s a third example. If you roll a six and a six on the critical injury table, your character’s heart was impaled, and they die immediately.
Healing. As long as you’ve got food, a player character recovers one hit point with each new day. If an ally succeeds on a medicine skill roll to help you, gain a hit point and you’re back up on your feet and no longer broken. The critical injury is still there, though. Every extra six on a medicine roll is one extra recovered hit point.
Helping allies. Allies can spend their entire action to help each other. Each person helping you narrates what they’re doing in the story to contribute, and this gives you one extra dice on a roll, to a maximum of three extra dice.
Jargon. The term d6 means a six sided dice. The phrase d66 means rolling first one, then a second six sided dice. The order they’re rolled matters. For example if you roll a 1 and then a 4, that’s the order they’re in, not four one. A d666 means rolling three six sided dice, and again the order matters. If you roll a two, a five, and a three, that’s the result, not in a different order. Double high means rolling two dice and keeping the highest. Double low means rolling two dice and keeping the lowest. Random dice means everyone rolls one dice and the lowest result loses. For example if a swarm attacks and the phrase ‘random dice’ is used to determine who gets bitten, every player rolls a d6 and the person with the lowest result is the person who got bitten. Opposed rolls where two people are butting heads, such as a race only one person can win or when one person is hiding and another is trying to find them, are resolved by both people rolling and the person with more sixes wins.
Building a character in The Walking Dead involves assigning eleven categories to your character sheet: archetype, name, issue, drive, attribute points, skill points, talent, gear, player character relationships, anchors, and haven. I have the rare opportunity to demonstrate character creation using someone people know and love from a TV show, so I’m going to do that. The creators of this game have made a character sheet for Glenn, so I’ll walk you through each choice they made to make him.
First, there are twelve archetypes, optional prebuilt classes you can use, if you want to quickly generate a pre built character of sorts. People like a doctor, a criminal, a farmer, a kid, a cop, a politician, a preacher, etc. These archetypes are like pregenerated characters that make the game really quick to pick up if you want to play now and think of character building never. Because we have a good idea of who Glenn is as a person, we won’t be using one of those pregenerated archetypes, but if you want to use that, it’s most of the way to a completed character sheet for you. But we don’t need an archetype, we’re making Glenn, who Free League publishing describes like this. Before the outbreak, Glenn was a pizza delivery driver in Atlanta, whose knowledge of the city streets and where to go saved him during the beginning of the outbreak. He soon joined a group of survivors camping outside Atlanta, and their trust in him, being the best at revisiting the city to find provisions, awakened a part of Glenn that had been asleep for a long time. He’s a scout and a runner for the group. Courageous, smart, and fast. But his real strength is his ability to see the best in others, to inspire trust, and to keep the group together. I agree, Free League publishing. It’s fun to play TTRPGs based on a show you’ve all watched, this is neat. Anyway, back to character creation, archetype is custom. Name is Glenn. His issue is that he’s eager to take risks for others. His drive is a desire for everyone to make it, together. All characters have thirteen points in attributes. For Glenn, that’s 2 in strength, 4 in agility, 4 in wits, and 3 in empathy. Starting level characters have twelve points in skills. You will get more as you level up. Glenn starts with one skill point in close combat, one in endure, zero in force, two skill points in mobility, one in ranged combat, three in stealth, two skill points in scout, one in survival, zero in tech, zero skill points in leadership, one in manipulation, and zero in medicine. As you level up, you may gain more skill points and talents. Glenn’s character sheet has two talents, so he’s slightly above starter level characters who have one talent. His two talents are Gatherer and Packmule. Gatherer gives Glenn a plus two to stealth, which means rolling two more dice, when Glenn is on his own. Packmule lets Glenn carry one extra slot of items. Next, Glenn has the gear of a pistol, a backpack with four rations, and a pair of walkie talkies. The pistol has the weapon stats of plus two, which means two extra dice when you roll with it, that it is able to target short range or closer enemies, and that it deals two damage when it hits. We write a few notes about Glenn’s relationships with the other player characters, name two anchors who are people in the group who are important to Glenn, who he can role play with to relieve stress points. For example a friend he can open up to about how he feels. This will depend on who the fellow player characters are. And lastly, we describe his haven, which depends on the adventure, and could range from a bus, a factory with a secure chain link fence surrounding it, a rich person’s house, or simply that old classic, a roof top.
For players in my upcoming The Walking Dead game, when you build your character, please follow the starting character rules, and because we’re late in the season playing high powered characters, please get an additional five skill points and three talents. Starting characters have twelve skill points, you have seventeen, with a max of five in any skill. Starting characters have one talents, you have four.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing The Walking Dead in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of The Walking Dead in action. We encourage you to find the The Walking Dead rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Welcome to a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. This is our rules discussion where we talk about how we felt about the rules we played in the past few games, for summer 2025. We’ll discuss the ttrpgs Tales From The Loop, DC20, Sexy Battle Wizards, Tiny Pirates, Into The Odd, Fudge Lite, Dragonbane, Outgunned, Black Powder and Brimstone, and Coriolis the Third Horizon.
Norbert, Newson, and Belle are hurled across the galaxy and must find their way home armed only with companionship, a little knowledge, and an accelerator cannon. Just Trying To Pay Rent is an actual play podcast of Coriolis The Third Horizon.
Norbert, Newson, and Belle are hurled across the galaxy and must find their way home armed only with companionship, a little knowledge, and an accelerator cannon. Just Trying To Pay Rent is an actual play podcast of Coriolis The Third Horizon.
How to play Coriolis The Third Horizon.
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Coriolis The Third Horizon. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Coriolis The Third Horizon game at home.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Attributes and skills
- Icons
- Initiative
- Action Points
- Armor
- Critical success
- Distances
- Ranged combat particulars
- Reactions
- Movement and encumbrance
- Partial damage
- Zero hit points or mind points
- Darkness points
- Building a character
Game category. Coriolis is a tabletop roleplaying game set in space. You can crew a space craft, explore the horizon by traveling to new star systems through portals, unravel secrets such as who built the portals, plot and scheme with factions over power and influence, pray to the icons, and carry out missions. But beware the Dark between the Stars, an unspeakable corrupting force in the intersection between civilization and the endless nothing of space. All of the dice used for Coriolis The Third Horizon are six sided dice, also called d6. You roll the number of dice your character has in a specific skill. If one of your dice rolls a six, you succeed at what you were trying to do. Coriolis has well described combat rules that players who enjoy Dungeons and Dragons will find interesting.
Attributes and skills. Your character has four attributes: Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy. Each attribute has a few skills, which are ways you can apply that attribute during gameplay. The strength attribute has the skill of melee combat. The agility attribute has the skills dexterity, infiltration, ranged combat, and piloting. The wits attribute has the skills observation, survival, data djinn, medicurgy, science, and technology. The empathy attribute has the skills manipulation, command, culture, and mystic powers.
Every point you have in an attribute or skill gives you a six sided dice, also called a d6, that you can roll. For example your observation skill is two and your wits attribute is three, so you roll five dice total when you observe. If you roll all the dice but none of them show the number six, that roll was a failure. Read the skill’s failure text out loud for your game master to interpret. If you get one six on one dice, that means you succeeded. One six is a limited success, so you will read the skill’s wording out loud to find out how that specific skill is limited. For example it might take longer than expected or the information gained might be brief. Extra sixes beyond the first one give you cool bonus effects, which vary depending on which skill you used. You can exchange each extra six one for one for a bonus effect. If you roll three sixes, that means you got a critical success. Each skill has words explaining how a critical success is awesome and how you get an extra bonus because of the critical.
There are 16 possible skills you can put points in. Half are general skills and the other half are advanced skills. Anyone can roll a general skill, but you can’t roll for an advanced skill unless you have at least one point in it. One notable advanced skill is command, which can be used to heal a stressed out ally whose mind points have been depleted to zero. You can’t roll for command to help your friend unless you have at least one point in it.
Here is an example skill roll. The airlock is closing. Sabah tries to hurl herself towards the airlock to make it through before it closes. The Game Master calls for a dexterity roll to see if Sabah gets through the airlock or not. Sabah has one point in the dexterity skill and three points in the agility attribute, so that means she rolls four dice total. If zero of the four dice show a six, she failed, and the airlock closes before she can get through it. If any of those dice show a six, she succeeds and makes it through the airlock before it closes. If one dice shows a six, that is called a limited success. For the dexterity skill, a limited success is described as, quote, “Limited success: you manage to pull off the maneuver, but just barely.” End quote. Every extra six beyond your first might let you pick a bonus effect from the dexterity skill’s page, if it has bonus effects. Some skills do, some skills don’t. Dexterity doesn’t have any bonus effects for extra sixes, but the manipulation skill, for example, does. If three of the dice show sixes, that’s a critical success. For dexterity, the rule book says, quote, “Critical Success. You succeed with flawless skill, and you achieve some unexpected, positive side effect, like helping a friend or creating an obstacle for an enemy. The GM decides the details.” End quote. This example of a skill roll shows you that the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get a limited success, get bonus effects, and get a critical success.
Icons. If your skill roll isn’t successful, one option you have is to pray to the icons, if that’s a thing you want to do. Praying to the icons can only impact skill rolls, not combat rolls. It’s an instant prayer your character can do that doesn’t take any time out of your other actions. You simply declare that you’re praying to the icon associated with the skill you’re rolling, and you can re roll all your failed dice that weren’t sixes. The rerolled dice now might become successes. If you prepared a prayer to that specific icon beforehand earlier in the session, then praying to that icon not only lets you reroll failed dice, but you also get either a plus one modifier which means one extra dice, or if you prayed in that icon’s chapel, then a plus two modifier which mean two extra dice. Every time you pray to an icon, though, the game master gets one darkness point.
Let’s begin talking about combat rules by starting with initiative. Initiative means turn order. When combat starts, each player rolls one d6, and the game master rolls one d6 for each enemy or group of enemies. The number on the dice is the character’s initiative score, and sets the order that people act in the round of combat. People who rolled a six can take their turn before people who rolled a five, who can take their turn before people who rolled a four, who can take their turn before people who rolled a three, etc. If two people both have the same number, roll a second dice and the higher number goes first. After everyone has gotten to go once, that ends the round, and it’s time to start a new round in the same initiative order as before.
Raising and lowering initiative. There are ways to raise your initiative score. There’s a talent called Combat Veteran that lets you roll twice and keep the higher dice result. Some weapons and certain skill bonuses can also raise your initiative score. If you are performing an attack in a way your GM accepts would surprise the enemy, add two to your initiative. Sneak attacks. To perform a sneak attack on an unsuspecting target, roll the number of dice you have in your infiltration skill and the skill will tell you how to interpret your success or failure. If you wait somewhere to ambush a target and they walk up to you while you remain stationary, you get a plus two to your infiltration roll. Sneak attacks also get modified by the range you are away from your target. Roll only once, and then increase or decrease your sneak attack’s initiative based on distance using table 5.2 on page 86. Lowering initiative. You have the option of choosing to lower your initiative score if you’d like to wait and see how things unfold. For example if you rolled a six for initiative but aren’t sure if these new arrivals are friends or foes, when it comes to you, you can choose to delay until a new lower number, such as a two. Your new score remains your permanent initiative for the rest of the combat.
Action points. At the start of the round of combat, you get three new action points. You can spend your action points to do slow, normal, fast and free actions. Unspent action points do not carry over to the next round.
A slow action costs all three action points. For example, administering first aid is a slow action. Tinkering with a gadget is a slow action. Activating a mystic power is a full action, and takes all three action points and your entire turn.
Normal actions cost two action points. For example, a melee attack in close combat is a normal action. Firing a shot on a ranged weapon is a normal action. Reloading your weapon is a normal action. After a normal action, you still have one action point left for your turn.
You can spend one action point to do a fast action. Some example fast actions are sprinting a short distance, defending, taking cover, dropping to the ground to make yourself harder to hit, getting up off of the ground, drawing a weapon, picking up an item, parrying in close combat, and making an attack of opportunity in close combat. These fast actions all only cost one action point. Note that you can’t attack while you are prone on the ground. While prone, you need to spend a fast action to stand up before you can attack. Quick melee attacks with a light weapon or unarmed also count as fast actions instead of normal actions, although they get a negative two modifier to the attack roll, which means rolling with two fewer dice. Movement is also a fast action. You can move as many meters as your movement rate for one fast action, which costs one action point.
The last category of actions are free, they don’t cost any action points. Some example free actions are when you quickly shout to a comrade, and when your armor protects you against an incoming attack. Those free actions can still be done even if you don’t have any action points left to spend. You can end your turn without having spent all of your action points, and you actually need to if you plan on reacting to an opponent’s attack. Defending against an incoming attack in close combat and making an attack of opportunity both cost one action point. When you help someone perform a slow, normal, or fast action, that counts as an action for you, too. For example, if you don’t have three action points, you can’t help someone with their slow action. Note: helping is never a fast action. The fastest helping can be is a normal action.
Armor. Using your armor is also a free action, and doesn’t cost any action points. When you’re taking damage from an attack, roll the number of dice you have in armor rating. Every six you roll reduces your incoming damage by one. If your armor reduces your incoming damage all the way to zero, you can’t suffer a critical injury from that attack.
Here is an example of a melee attack. To attack an enemy in close range, first say you’re spending two action points to do a normal action to attack in close combat. Then roll the number of dice of your melee combat skill and the number of dice you have in strength. If you get one six, you hit the enemy, yay. When you successfully hit an enemy, your weapon deals the number of damage your weapon says it deals. That’s part of the weapon’s stats. If you get extra sixes, you can spend them one for one to choose an additional effect listed in the melee combat skill’s rule book text. Extra dice can also be spent for extra effects during ranged attacks, too, by the way. The bonus effects for a melee attack include dealing more damage, inflicting a critical injury, striking fear into your enemy, raising your initiative, disarming your enemy, and grappling them. You can have page eighty seven of the rule book open when you attack to read those six bonus options you can choose from, or you can add that text to your character sheet to avoid having to flip through the rule book. Each extra six you roll on your attack can buy one extra effect. For example if you roll two extra sixes, you might choose to do one extra point of damage and disarm your target. Picking their weapon back up would cost them a fast action. Or you could choose two extra points of damage.
Here is an example of how you can ranged attack spending your choice of three, two, or one action points. If you spend three action points, that is a slow action called an aimed shot. You roll your ranged attack number of dice and your agility stat number of dice with a plus two modifier, which means rolling extra dice to represent how you’re taking the time to aim carefully. If your target is within melee distance of you, they’re close enough to react to your slow careful aim and you can’t make an aimed shot against them. You can make a normal shot against a melee target, though. A normal ranged attack costs two action points and has no modifier. Or the third option is that you can spend one action point to do a quick shot, a type of fast action. Rather than taking the time to aim carefully, a quick shot means you’re shooting from the hip. Hey, even hip shots can hit people. Sure, you get a negative two modifier to your attack roll, with means rolling with two fewer dice, but that might still hit the target, and it only cost you one action point, so in some circumstances a quick shot might be just what you need. Those three examples show how a ranged attack can be made spending one, two, or three action points, for a negative two, zero, and positive two attack modifier.
Critical success. As with skills, any time you roll three sixes in combat, that’s a critical success. Your weapon comes with a number for how much damage it does on a critical.
Distances. There are four distance ranges in Coriolis. Something is close range if it is within two meters of you. Two meters is about how long a person is if they lay down. You can step and reach a person two meters from you easily. Short range in Coriolis includes anything up to twenty meters away from you. Twenty meters is how long five cars parked end to end are. Twenty meters is about twice as high as a telephone pole. Long range in Coriolis is anything up to one hundred meters away. One hundred meters is how long a football field is, or about how far you would get if you were quickly walking for one minute. Beyond a hundred meters, everything is called extreme range.
Ranged combat particulars. There are a few things that only come up during a combat involving a ranged weapon. These include target size, range modifiers, taking cover, reloading, automatic fire, mounted weapons, and multiple targets. If you’re a melee fighter fighting a melee enemy, you never need to think about any of those things. But if you’re using a ranged weapon or your opponent is, here’s what those terms do.
Target size. If your target is prone or small, your ranged attack gets a minus one modifier, which means rolling with one fewer dice to hit. If your target is large like car sized, you get a plus one modifier, and roll with an extra dice. If you’re trying to hit a huge target, like the side of a barn, you get a plus two modifier and roll with two extra dice to hit.
Range modifiers. Firing at a target that is short range, between two and twenty meters away, is normal and doesn’t have range modifiers. At long range, between twenty and a hundred meters away, your ranged attack gets a negative one modifier, so you roll with one less dice. At extreme range beyond a hundred meters, your ranged attack gets a negative two modifier and you roll with two less dice. If you’re within close range, two meters, the modifier depends on whether the target is engaged in combat with you or unaware of you slash immobile. For a target engaged in melee combat with you, probably grabbing your weapon and pushing it out of the way, you get a minus three modifier and roll with three fewer dice to hit. For a target unaware of you or immobilized and unable to dodge your projectile, your ranged attack is made with a plus three modifier, three extra dice.
Taking cover. Cover only protects against ranged attack, not melee attacks. Taking cover is a fast action and costs one action point, separate from the movement to reach the cover, which might also be one action point. You can move as many meters as your movement for one action point. The armor rating of different types of covers varies, ranging from two armor for a sofa couch to four armor for a door to five to seven for interior and exterior walls, to a maximum of eight armor for being underground in a foxhole. Cover and armor can be combined. An example of using cover is, if you’re in a fox hole and someone hits you with an attack and would deal four damage to you, roll eight dice for your cover plus one dice for your armor for nine dice total. Every resulting six reduces that four incoming damage by one. Ranged attackers don’t solely suffer from cover rules protecting their targets. If you’re firing from cover, you get a plus one modifier on your attack and roll with one extra dice, for aimed shots and normal shots, but not quick shots, which are made from the hip too rapidly to have aimed.
Reloading. Reloading during combat is a normal speed action and takes two of your three action points. Most ranged weapons don’t need to be reloaded during a combat. Certain specific ranged weapons don’t have enough ammunition to not run out during one fight, depending on which type you’re using. If you’re using a long rifle, bow, or rocket launcher, you’ll have to reload after every time you fire. And in the special circumstance that you fired three quick shots in the same turn, if you’re not using a mounted weapon, your clip is depleted and needs to be reloaded. Note: there is a talent called Rapid Reload that makes reloading faster.
Automatic fire. Fully automatic weapons are a bit different from other ranged weapons. They fire as a slow attack which costs three action points. They have to fire on a target at long range or closer, not extreme range. They fire at a negative two modifier, which means two fewer dice on your to hit roll, your ranged attack plus agility roll. Those three things are downsides. But the upside is that whether or not your initial attack hit, you can choose to keep rolling dice one at a time. The extra dice get added to your first roll. Remember, extra sixes can get you extra effects, like dealing one more point of damage. So you can keep adding one dice after another after another, up until you roll a one, at which point the fully automatic weapon’s clip is empty and needs to be reloaded. Reloading takes two action points.
Mounted weapons. If you mount your fully automatic weapon on a vehicle, full auto fire has the additional perk of a one ending the attack but not needing a reloading action, because the vehicle has enough space to store a very large clip of ammunition.
Multiple targets. The last cool perk of fully automatic weapons is that after rolling is finished, you can choose how to distribute your successes to a new target that is within close range of that first target. The first six that you distribute to a target is a normal hit that deals the weapon’s damage. Every six after the first one can do one of the ranged weapon attack bonus effects, which includes an extra point of damage, among other things. There’s no limit to how many targets you can hit as long as they’re within close range of the previous target.
Reactions. There are also three reactions in Coriolis. Reactions are fast actions that cost one action point to do. These three reactions are: defending in melee, overwatch fire from ranged, and attacks of opportunity. Defending in melee. To defend, first say that you’re going to defend before the attacker rolls their attack against you. Then spend one action point. Then roll the number of dice you have in your melee combat skill and your strength attribute. For each six the defender rolls, you can choose from a list of options that includes decreasing damage, counterattacking, disarming your attacker, or raising your initiative. If the enemy attacked you with a weapon but you were defending unarmed, roll with a minus two modifier, which means you roll with two fewer dice. Enemies can defend if the game master spends a darkness point. Overwatch fire. An overwatch fire is a fast action where you spend one action point to be able to name a ninety degree arc direction you’re setting up a watch in. At any time, you can spend two action points to fire on anything in your watch area. Your attack goes off before the enemy’s, even after they declare their action. If both you and the enemy are in an overwatch position, then you both roll your ranged combat dice to decide who goes first. Attacks of opportunity. An attack of opportunity is when you choose to spend one action point to close combat fight an enemy who was in melee range with you but is now moving away from you. Add plus two to your attack roll. If they stop within melee range of you then you can’t attack of opportunity them.
Movement and encumbrance. Your normal movement speed of your movement rate number of meters might get decreased by difficult terrain, crawling, or sneaking. Difficult terrain, crawling, and sneaking all halve your movement rate.
Overencumbered. If you are carrying more than twice your strength number of items, roll the Force skill every time you move a long distance. If you fail the roll, then either let go of some items or stop moving.
Partial damage. There are some experiences in Coriolis that cause only a fraction of a damage point but, if you receive multiple, can add up to one damage. If you fall, drown for multiple rounds, catch on fire, get smacked by the blast power of an explosion, stay hungry or thirsty for a long amount of time, get too cold, get exposed to the vacuum of space for multiple rounds, are exposed to radiation, etc, your game master might have you keep track of how long you’re exposed for to see if it adds up to one damage point.
Reaching zero hit points or zero mind points. You might reach zero hit points during a combat. You start with the number of hit points of your strength and agility numbers added together. So if your strength is three and your agility is four, you would start with seven hit points. You might have some talents that increase your hit points, too. So what happens during a combat when you run out of hit points and reach zero? That’s called being broken. Broken characters are unable to continue fighting. They’re either unconscious or unable to physically move their bodies. All you can do is ask your friends for help. If you get hit again in this state, you could suffer a critical injury. Only critical injuries can actually kill your character, and they’re not guaranteed to do that. Table five point six on pages ninety six and ninety seven list the critical injury possibilities. There is a d66 table of injury options. To see which one you receive, roll a first six sided dice, also called a d6, to represent the first digit, and then a second d6 to represent the second digit. For example, rolling a three and then a five would be a thirty five on the table. Rolling a one and a two would be a twelve. Each critical injury table entry explains what happens to you and, if you can recover from it, how long that recovery takes. Numbers one through thirty five don’t instantly kill your character. Numbers thirty six through sixty six do instantly kill your character. If you have a good game master, they’ll let you play as a non player character you met earlier in the adventure rather than have you sit out for the rest of the session after your character dies. If you character lives, there are two ways you can recover. The first is to receive first aid. First aid is a slow action, so it costs three action points, performed by an ally rolling their medicurgy skill number of dice. If there’s at least one six, the roll is successful, and your character gets back up immediately, regaining as many hit points as sixes on the medicurgy roll. The second way to recover is by time passing. If you survive the fight, roll a d6 and that’s how many hours pass before you gain one hit point back. Then once you’re no longer broken, you regain one hit point per hour until you’re fully healed. The critical injury has its own separate healing trajectory explained in its entry in the critical injury table.
Reaching zero mind points. You can be attacked not only physically, which depletes your hit points, but also mentally by stress, which depletes your mind points. If you reach zero mind points, your character is too stressed out to function normally. Roll a d6 and that’s how many hours pass before you regain a mind point and are able to function again, unless your friends help you. Your friends can help you recover by rolling command or medicurgy. Note that command is an advanced skill that can only be used by characters with at least one point in it. Each friend only has once chance to help you. Recovery attempts are a slow action that cost three action points, and you gain as many mind points as they get sixes on their dice. Once you’re back up to at least one mind point, you will recover one mind point per hour until you’re back to maximum. Roll a d6 to see if you suffer any permanent effects. If the result is a one, your maximum mind points are permanently reduced by one. If that happens multiple times and your maximum mind points drop to zero, it’s time to make a new character.
Darkness points. I mentioned earlier that every time a player prays to an icon to reroll their failed dice that didn’t have sixes on them, the game master gets a darkness point. Praying to icons is not the only way a game master gains darkness points. It also happens every time the players portal jump, travel in the dark between stars, or use a mystic power. The game master can spend darkness points any time they want to put an obstacle in front of the player characters. Rerolling failed GM dice can be done by spending one darkness point. An NPC breaking initiative order and going first costs one darkness point. A player character’s clip running out of ammunition, meaning the player has to spend two action points to reload after this attack is finished, costs one darkness point. Making a player character misfire, which means the attack is lost and the player character has to spend three action points to clear the jam, costs three darkness points. An NPC can take a reactive action if the game master spends one darkness point. For three darkness points, a player character can drop and lose an important item of the game master’s choice. Reinforcements can be purchased for one to three darkness points during combat. Innocent bystanders can be caught up in the danger for two darkness points. A player character’s personal problem from their character sheet can suddenly affect them for one darkness point. The environment can suddenly endanger the player characters for one to three darkness points. The player character can be struck with sudden madness for one to three darkness points. And lastly some nonplayer character talents or abilities can be activated by darkness points.
Building a character in Coriolis The Third Horizon involves writing something down for the about a dozen categories. These categories are: name, appearance, background, upbringing, concept, reputation score, distribute attribute points, determine hit points, determine mind points, distribute skill levels, talent, icon and icon talent, personal problem, relationship with other player characters, gear, and crew position.
Let’s roll an example character, Calico Jack, a pirate NPC, or non player character, from our past adventure, “Salty Sea Shanties”. He’s a 4 foot, five inch tall handsome sea dwarf with salt and pepper hair. When he smiles at people he’s flirting with, a gold tooth sparkles. Calico Jack’s background is a space to write on the character sheet about where he’s from and how he grew up. Is he a normal human? No, he’s a sea dwarf. Table 2.2 lets you pick one of three upbringing options: plebian, stationary, and privileged. He’s a plebian, so he gets 15 attribute points, 8 skill points, 2 reputation points and 500 birr currency to start with.
Concept. We write on our character sheet what Calico Jack’s concept is, basically, what he does for a living. He’s a pirate captain, so, looking at the list of options, he’d be either a pilot or a fugitive from this list. Probably a fugitive, yeah. Specifically, a criminal. The criminal concept has a page with some stats, and it tells us that criminals like Calico Jack have negative two reputation points. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess that means 2 reputation points from being a plebian minus 2 reputation points from being a criminal leaves us with 0 reputation points.
Distributing attribute points. How many points you get to distribute depends on your upbringing, so looking his plebian upbringing, we have 15 attribute points to distribute. An individual attribute should be at least 2 and at most 4, with the exception of your key attribute, which should be 5. The criminal’s key attribute is empathy. The four attributes are Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy. We’ll start by setting the key attribute, empathy, to 5. That leaves ten points left. Calico Jack is fairly well rounded, so we’ll put 3 points each in the other attributes, giving that last point to wits so he can outsmart the law enforcers following him. Calico Jack’s attribute distribution is: strength 3, agility 3, wits 4, empathy 5.
Hit points and mind points. To calculate your hit points, add your strength and agility together. Calico Jack’s strength is 3 and agility is 3, so that means he has 6 hit points. To calculate your mind points, add your wits and empathy together. Calico Jack’s wits are 4 and empathy is 5, so that means he has 9 mind points. Damage can reduce hit points, and stress can reduce mind points.
There are 16 possible skills you can put points in. Half are general skills and half are advanced skills. Anyone can roll a general skill, but you can’t roll for an advanced skill unless you have at least one point in it. As a plebian, Calico Jack has 8 skill points to distribute. The criminal concept’s skills are force, melee combat, dexterity, and infiltration, so let’s put two points into each of those recommended skills. Voila, done. For my players who are playing at a higher level than starting characters, you’ll have five extra skill points to distribute. The most skill points you can put in any one skill is five.
Your talent depends on your concept. The criminal’s talents are listed, and we can pick from intimidating, mystical power, or nine lives. Oh, definitely nine lives for Calico Jack. That’s his talent. Looking up the talent on a later page, it gives Calico Jack this ability, quote, “No matter how bad it looks, you always seem to come out of situations alive. When you suffer a critical injury, you get to switch the dice – turning the tens digit into the ones and vice versa (page 94). If your attacker has the talent Executioner, the effects neutralize each other – roll the critical injury normally.”
Every character gets an icon and an icon talent. You can roll for it on table 2.5, or my players can pick out the icon that most matches their character. Calico Jack would probably respect The Gambler or The Deckhand or The Merchant or The Traveler. The Deckhand’s talent suits Calico Jack. It says, quote, “If your ship drops to zero Hull Points or Energy Points, you can restore D6 points of either kind instantly. This requires no action from you – it is the Icons intervening on your behalf.”
The criminal has some options for personal problems. I think I’ll pick this one, quote, “A group of zealous Icon believers are on your tail.” Calico Jack is always trying to escape the people he most recently plundered.
The criminal concept lists some example relationships to other players characters. This one makes me chuckle. Quote, your team mate “is principled. A shame it’s the wrong principles, though.” Haha, so Calico Jack respects that you obey those law things, but not the laws themselves. Gear. The criminal starts with some gear. I’ll roll randomly since it’s a table. He starts with a transactor with a fake identity. That’s handy. Neat. The very last choice in character creation is the crew position. Calico Jack would be the captain. Thus concludes our creation of the Coriolis The Third Horizon version of Calico Jack. The character sheet is all filled out.
For players in my upcoming Coriolis The Third Horizon game, when you build your character, please follow these starting character rules, and add another five skill points. You can put a maximum of five points into any one skill. Your weapon can be any weapon listed in your concept’s starting gear list of items. As your GM, I’ll describe the group’s concept, spaceship, group talent, patron, and nemesis. Not all of that information gets shared with the players, but I can say your group talent will be Last Laugh: the party can get yourselves out of a pinch using your knack for entertainment. The GM gets one Darkness Point per use, and the party can use Last Laugh once per session.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Coriolis The Third Horizon in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Coriolis The Third Horizon in action. We encourage you to find the Coriolis The Third Horizon rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Rock The Boat is an actual play podcast of the Black Powder and Brimstone system. Ships are disappearing off the Crescent Steps and there are rumors of a sea beast. Deli and Hefty are on the job to restore the safety of the shipping route.
Rock The Boat is an actual play podcast of the Black Powder and Brimstone system. Ships are disappearing off the Crescent Steps and there are rumors of a sea beast. Deli and Hefty are on the job to restore the safety of the shipping route.
Using the Outgunned TTRPG mechanics, Belle, Muriel, Arik, and Muse stop a bar fight and wind up involving themselves in a car chase, high seas heist, and fight against weresharks guarding Atlantis. What more could you want?
Using the Outgunned TTRPG mechanics, Belle, Muriel, Arik, and Muse stop a bar fight and wind up involving themselves in a car chase, high seas heist, and fight against weresharks guarding Atlantis. What more could you want?
Join Oliver, Alastair, and Divan as they use the Outgunned mechanics to rescue a lost boat of seamen from a watery grave and learn of secrets hidden in the deep.
Join Oliver, Alastair, and Divan as they use the Outgunned mechanics to rescue a lost boat of seamen from a watery grave and learn of secrets hidden in the deep.
How To Play Outgunned
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Outgunned. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Outgunned game at home.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Skills
- Distances
- Gear
- How to attack
- Grit
- Conditions
- Time Out
- Reloading
- Death roulette
- Gambling
- Cover
- Adrenaline
- Spotlight
- Rides
- Chases
- Helping allies
- Double difficulty
- Weak spots
- Re-rolling
- Extra actions
- Heat
- Building a character
Game category. Outgunned is a cinematic action role playing game. We’ve all seen movies where heroes crawl through air ducts, keep a runaway bus above a minimum speed, face off alone against a dozen goons, look to the camera with a dashing cut on their cheek, a hero who walks in slow motion towards the camera while everything behind them explodes. That’s the type of game Outgunned is, and that’s the sort of hero you will be roleplaying as. A hero is someone on a mission who lives dangerously and is one of the good guys. Central to the theme of Outgunned is the idea that the hero is racing against time, making split second decisions with great consequence, never stopping to look back. There’s no rest for heroes. Your goal is to carry out your mission, whether that means avenging your dog, finding your kidnapped loved one, clearing out a bank vault, or something else. Mechanically, you will accomplish this by rolling multiple six sided dice, also called d6, hoping to get not high or low numbers, but matching results of two of a kind, three of a kind, or even four of the same number across multiple dice. Gear such as your weapon give you more dice to roll. Feats during character creation let you reroll failed rolls when attempting certain types of actions. If the going gets tough, you can spend the limited adrenaline and spotlight resources to pull off something really cool in an an epic scene.
Skills. When you want your character to do an action that has the risk of something going wrong, you will pick the relevant skill on your character sheet. You will roll as many six sided dice, also called d6, as you have as a number in that skill and attribute. There are five attributes: brawn, nerves, smooth, focus, and crime. Each attribute lists four skills under it.
You can and usually will pair the skill with the attribute it’s listed under, but you don’t have to. You’re not required to combine the attribute that’s directly above a skill on the character sheet. For example, the know skill is under the focus attribute on the character sheet. If you are at a fancy cocktail party before an opera and are trying to make a good impression on the mayor with your sophisticated knowledge of opera, you can roll the smooth attribute with the know skill. The know skill is listed under the focus attribute, but you can use the smooth attribute because it better fits what you’re trying to do.
Success on a skill roll. In Outgunned, success is determined by whether or not you got multiple dice of the same number. It doesn’t matter how high or low the number is. A one isn’t bad and a six isn’t good. Getting two ones or two sixes is what you’re looking for.
There are four difficulty levels: basic, critical, extreme, and impossible. A basic difficulty needs two dice to have matching numbers for you to succeed. For example, two twos. If you get a basic success after rolling the dice, you are eligible to reroll your dice that weren’t part of the combination once. A critical difficulty is cleared with three of a kind. For example, three twos. An extreme difficulty needs four dice to have the same number to pass. The impossible difficulty requires five dice to show the same number to succeed. What happens if you get six dice of a kind? If that ever happens, which it probably won’t, six dice of a kind is called a Jackpot. If you roll a jackpot, you become the Game Master, who is called the Director in Outgunned, for one turn. Players can roll nine dice at most. The probability table for how likely a player is to succeed at each of the four difficulty levels for rolling two through nine dice is on page 67.
Here is an example of a roll at basic difficulty, where two dice need to be the same number for you to succeed. Let’s say you are sneaking through an air duct quietly, infiltrating the compound stealthily, when suddenly a spider crawls on you. You try to stay as still as possible, because if you react loudly, your enemy could hear you. Roll as many dice as you have in nerves and cool. The Director says this is pretty basic. With two dice in nerves and one in cool, your odds of getting two dice to be the same number when rolling three dice is 45%. So there’s about a fifty fifty chance the spider crawls on you and you scream loudly, revealing your location, and a fifty fifty chance that you stay quiet.
Here’s an example of a roll at critical difficulty, where you need three dice to show the same number to succeed. It’s a time out and your friend’s arm is hurt. You offer to bandage them up. This requires the focus attribute and heal skill. You have a three in both focus and heal, and roll six dice. If three dice show the same number, you successfully healed your friend. On 6 dice, you have a 37% chance to succeed at a critical difficulty roll. With a reroll you would have a 75% success rate.
If you’re not certain what attribute and skill to roll, ask yourself how what you’re trying to do could fail. What is at stake here and what are the consequences of failure? Here is an example. You are driving at top speed towards a bridge when you see that the bridge is rising and a gap is opening over the water. What could go wrong? If you chicken out and stomp on the brakes at the last minute, your car might not have enough speed to clear the gap. Or if you drive poorly, you might launch the car into the river instead of onto the second half of the bridge. Because your nerves and driving skill are what could make the situation fail, roll nerves as your attribute and drive as your skill.
Distances. Outgunned’s distance ranges are melee, close, medium, and long. Melee range is within two meters. Close range is between two and ten meters. You can run ten meters with a quick action. Medium range is ten to fifty meters. You can use a full action to run medium range. Most weapons can hit medium range targets. Long range is fifty to three hundred meters. Out of range is anything beyond three hundred meters, which usually requires a special weapon like a sniper rifle to reach.
Gear. In Outgunned, your character will have at least one weapon from the gear table, something like a pistol, revolver, assault rifle, bow and arrows, or even rocket launchers. Every gear weapon has stats that explain how many dice you get to add to your roll when using that weapon at different distance ranges. A +1 at close range means you get one extra dice when you’re aiming at a target in close range. A minus two at medium range means you roll with two fewer dice when you’re aiming at a target in medium range. An X at long range means the weapon cannot be used against long range targets. If there’s a G next to the range, the G stands for gambling, and means the weapon could hurt you and your allies as well as your enemies. Use the gambling mechanic when attacking with that weapon. About melee weapons. The rule book says that melee weapons rarely make a difference, which makes sense when you imagine a baseball bat versus a rocket launcher. So there aren’t any stats in the gear table for melee weapons. During melee attacks, you simply roll your brawn attribute and fight skill.
How to attack. Attacking uses your skills, just like the other rolls. For example if your spy is firing their silenced pistol at a target at medium range, you would roll as many dice as you have in the focus attribute, for this spy that’s two in focus, plus as many dice as the spy has in the shoot skill, for this spy that’s two in shoot, plus the number of dice you get from your gear for that range. The silenced pistol gets zero extra dice at medium range, but it doesn’t alert the enemy or reveal your position. That’s two plus two plus zero equals four dice total. How many dice you need to see match depends on the enemy’s difficulty. This target has a basic difficulty, which means two of the dice you roll have to be the same number to succeed. Rolling four dice gives you a 72% chance of succeeding. If you fail to get two dice that are the same number, that’s the end of your action. If you succeed and get one pair, the enemy loses one grit. If you succeed twice, like if you get two sets of matching dice, then the enemy would lose two grit. Grit in Outgunned is similar to hit points in other games.
Here’s a second example attack. The villain is escaping in an armored limo. The ride has a critical difficulty setting, meaning three dice have to match to succeed against it. It has no armor left, and is spewing black smoke and screeching as it peels away. If you make this shot, the tire will burst, the wheel won’t be able to turn anymore, and the limo might even blow up. You have one chance to fire your weapon at long range to take out the tire before they get too far away to be hit. You can attack by rolling as many dice as you have in the nerves attribute, plus the dice in your shoot skill, plus the dice in your weapon at long range. A character who has three dice in nerves and two dice in shoot would roll five dice. If you’re wielding a rifle, you don’t get any extra dice at long range, but unlike people who have a shotgun or a throwing knife that have an X at long range, your rifle is allowed to attempt the roll. Five dice have a 21% chance of succeeding at a critical difficulty, to get three matching dice. With a reroll, that's a 47% chance of succeeding. If you roll the dice and don’t get three of the same number, you fail unless you spend a precious resource like an adrenaline or a spotlight. If you roll the dice and do get three of the same number, you succeed. The rifle bullet hits the tire, the wheel sprays bright sparks up from the road, the limo fish tails, and crashes into a light pole, and blows up, depleting six grit from everyone inside. Woo hoo!
Combat is a series of alternating action turns and reaction turns. On action turns, the heroes can attack or make any action roll they want. Heroes can take one quick action for free, such as picking up an item or reloading a weapon. Your roll is made against each specific enemy’s defense rating, which ranges from basic, critical, extreme, up to impossible. On reaction turns, heroes must defend themselves with a reaction roll. A lot of Outgunned enemies will attack all players at once, such as a spray of bullets or an exploding grenade. The game master for Outgunned, known as a Director, will tell the players what attribute and skill to roll to defend. Each enemy has an attack difficulty rating, again ranging from basic, to critical, extreme, and impossible. Basic means two matching dice, critical means three matching dice, extreme means four matching dice, and impossible means five dice match. If you score extra successes on your reaction roll, you can make a counterattack. For example if the enemy’s attack was basic and only needed two of a kind to succeed, and you get two ones and two sixes, you can spend the second success on a counterattack. The enemy loses one grit and you describe how you counter attacked them. An extra success at the enemy’s attack difficulty level can also be spent to protect a friend who failed their reaction roll. Your first success protects you, and your second success can protect your friend.
Here is an example defense roll. The enemy is shooting at you. The Director tells you all to roll your brawn plus stunt number of dice at critical difficulty to dodge out of the way to avoid being hit and losing grit. Your character has two dice in brawn and three in stunt. Two plus three means you roll five dice total, giving you a 21% chance of getting three matching dice to defend against a critical difficulty attack. If you don’t get three matching dice, then you lose one grit.
Grit. Grit in Outgunned is similar to hit points in other games. When a roll isn’t dangerous, you’re not going to lose any grit. When you fail at a dangerous roll though, you lose grit based on the roll’s difficulty. Fail a basic roll and lose one grit. Failing a critical roll means you lose three grit. Failing an extreme roll means you lose nine grit. Failing an impossible roll means you lose all grit. The character sheet for Outgunned has twelve grit placeholders on it. When you lose grit, fill in that many grit boxes on the character sheet. Or if you’re not using that character sheet, keep track of the eighth position, which is labeled with these words, “bad, gain a condition”, and the twelvth position, which is labeled, “hot, gain two adrenaline.” When you reach eight and twelve, remember to do those things.
Damage control. Damage control is when you can use smaller successes to mitigate how bad the failure of a dangerous roll was. For example if the dangerous roll required a critical, three matching dice, and you only got a basic, two matching dice, then you can use the smaller basic success to mitigate the failure to the critical roll. For every basic success you roll on a critical difficulty dangerous challenge that requires three matches, lose one less grit. For every critical success you roll on an extreme dangerous challenge that needs four matches, lose three fewer grit. You can’t do damage control for an impossible roll. When all of your grit boxes are filled up, representing that you’ve lost all your grit, the next time you are supposed to add grit, you have to take a spin on the death roulette. You can’t use damage control to help your friends, only yourself.
Recovering grit. You can recover grit by sleeping, taking a break the Director agrees is appropriate for a full recovery, and at the end of the session. Your grit recovers back to full.
Conditions. When you fail a roll, the Director might tell you that you gain a condition. Your eighth grit loss, the box labeled “bad”, also gives you a condition. Conditions are written as a negative one. This negative one means you roll one fewer dice. For example, if you were going to roll six dice, but your condition says negative one, you would only roll five dice. Most conditions are linked to a core attribute, and apply to rolls made with that attribute. When you take a beating, or fall from a height or get blown up, you might gain the hurt condition. While hurt, your brawn rolls are made with one less dice. If you seek out and receive medical care, that can remove the hurt condition. When you survive danger by an inch, or your efforts fail, or you’re under a great deal of stress, you might gain the nervous condition. While nervous, your nerves rolls are made with one less dice. When you get embarrassed in front of other people, or give your friends a reason not to trust you or lose respect for you, you might gain the foolish condition. While foolish, your smooth rolls have one less dice. You can overcome feeling foolish by doing something that gets you recognition or respect. When you think about a problem for too long without finding a solution, or get charmed or confused, you might get the distracted condition. While distracted, your focus rolls are all at minus one, one less dice. You can overcome being distracted by spending two adrenaline on a focus roll. When you’re afraid of losing something or someone important to you, or suffer a great shock, you might gain the scared condition. While scared, all the rolls you make with the crime attribute are made with one fewer dice. You can overcome being scared by facing the subject of your fear and being victorious. You’re free to invent other conditions that fit this format. Page 93 of the rule book gives some examples like disheartened that gives you a minus one to all rolls requiring courage, angry that gives you a minus one to all rolls requiring calmness or precision, confused that gives you a minus one to all knowledge rolls, et cetera.
The tired condition isn’t linked to any attribute. You just look tired. You can overcome being tired by eating a hot meal and getting a good night’s sleep. There’s no dice rolling penalty, but being tired counts as a condition. The reason why how many conditions you have matters is because three conditions are fine, but the fourth condition you gain makes you broken, which means you roll a negative one to all your rolls. You can’t gain any more conditions when you’re broken. It’s already affecting all of your rolls. You can overcome being broken by spending a few days in a hospital, or if a friend rolls for focus and heal during a time out to treat your wounds at extreme difficulty, four matching dice. You can also spend a Spotlight to remove any one condition, including the broken condition. Two conditions can be removed per day, maximum.
Time Out. Your character can recover from conditions when they are completely safe from all dangers. One example of this is during a time out. A time out is a breather scene where you can recover a bit. There are five possible actions during a time out. Each character can choose two of the five time out actions. These actions are: investigating to find clues, healing oneself or an ally, fixing a weapon or a ride, shopping to buy weapons or gear or magazines, and working on something else. A time out ends once each player has had a chance to do two of those actions, or has said that they pass.
Failure isn’t the end in Outgunned. When you roll dice and it’s a failure, think of these four things you can roleplay doing that will progress the story, a type of ‘failing forward’. You can roll with the punches, suggesting an unpleasant consequence for either this scene or a future scene as a barter to the GM for letting you accomplish your goal. You can pay the price, offering to gain a condition or lose some cash or break a gear in order to achieve your goal. If you want, in Outgunned you can always choose to sacrifice a piece of gear to gain one more dice for an important roll. If a heal roll is really important, you can choose to sacrifice your clothes and become bedraggled looking to use the cloth as bandages and get an extra dice for your heal roll. You can take the hard road, not achieving your goal but instead gaining an important clue or information that could point towards a different path. Lastly you could face danger, which is when you encounter an enemy because of your failure. Players are encouraged to name these four options, roll with the punches, pay the price, take the hard road, and face danger, and present some ideas to your Director when you fail a roll.
Reloading. As long as you’re succeeding in your attacks, you’re not going to run out of bullets. There are only three ways to run out of bullets, which Outgunned tracks as magazines of bullets, or mags. The first way to empty your magazine is to roll a failure, such as when you shoot. Imagine that you just kept firing over and over and over until the click click click of a unloaded weapon told you that you not only didn’t hit your target, but you also emptied your magazine. Your Director can say your magazine became unusable from any failed roll in general. The second way you can run out of bullets is by choosing voluntarily to go what’s called Full Auto. When you want, you can opt to go full auto to get a plus one to your roll in exchange for needing to reload afterwards. More bullets makes you more likely to hit. The third way you can empty your magazine is choosing to offer covering fire to a friend. Your friend gets the plus one dice on their next reaction defensive roll while you lay down covering fire for them. It uses all your bullets to keep the enemy distracted while your friend survives. When any of these three things happen, failure, going full auto, or covering fire, you’ll need to reload. Spend a quick action and check off one of the magazines on your character sheet. If you don’t have any magazines left, you didn’t reload.
Death roulette. So it’s happened. You had been out of grit, all twelve of your grit boxes had been filled in, and now you’re supposed to lose more grit, but there isn’t any left. It’s time to spin on the death roulette. Outgunned’s mechanism for determining player character death is rooted in probability. Every character begins the game with one out of six bullet positions filled in. To spin on the death roulette, roll a six sided dice. The first time you roll, only rolling a one will mean your character is left for dead. A two, three, four, five, or six are fine, you’re safe. Describe how you narrowly escaped being left for dead. Every time your character spins the death roulette, one more bullet is added to it. The second roll, a one or a two will mean your character is left for dead. A three, four, five, or six, are still safe, a narrow escape. Anything that says it adds a lethal bullet to your death roulette increases that number by one. If a friend spends a spotlight to save you from a failed death roulette roll, the hero who used the spotlight describes the epic action they took to save your life. If nobody spends a spotlight to save you, your character isn’t necessarily dead, but they are left for dead, which means you get left behind or are unconscious or too scared to continue, et cetera. You can describe what’s stopping your character from being able to continue. A good game master, called a Director in Outgunned, will give you a character sheet for a non player character so you can still play in the session. It’s also possible for a character who was left for dead to rejoin the story at a turning point or during a showdown. Turning points and show downs are big boss fights, basically. A turning point is a really important boss fight that changes the whole direction of the adventure but isn’t at the end of it, and a showdown is often at the end, the final confrontation. When a character returns from being left for dead in a turning point or a showdown, they return with a scar. A scar is something that seriously affects your character going forward, like a strong emotional or physical change because of what you went through.
Gambling. When you gamble in Outgunned, a gamble has the threat of you losing more grit that you normally would. When you handle explosives, you’re gambling. When you drive at top speed, you’re gambling. If you’re firing at an enemy who is in melee range of your ally, you’re gambling. When you’ve attempted something truly insane that might pay off in a big way, your Director might tell you that you’re gambling. On a gamble, look at your dice for ones. Every one you roll is one grit you lose. Ouch. But gambles aren’t all downside. You can choose to declare a roll as a gamble, if you want. When you opt to gamble on a roll, declare that you want what you’re trying to do to be a gamble. If you Director agrees, then it is. Gain one extra dice on that roll, and report any ones. Each one you rolled is one lost grit. Yes, you can reroll ones, if you were gambling and got some ones and are able to reroll. Rerolling can help you get rid of some of those ones. Grit damage only counts the dice on the table at the end of all rerolls.
Cover. If you spend a quick action to duck behind partial cover in Outgunned, you roll with one extra dice on your rolls during the reaction defending phase of combat, and roll with one fewer dice during the action phase of combat. If you spend your whole turn getting fully covered, completely covered, then you automatically succeed on reaction defending rolls, but your attack rolls are made with three fewer dice. Yes you can push someone else behind cover in Outgunned. So the target of your cover quick or full action can be yourself or an ally. If you want to try to dive behind cover and take a friend with you, too, you can do that, roll for an extreme difficulty which needs four dice to match to succeed.
Adrenaline. Every character starts the game with one adrenaline. You can spend adrenaline to gain one extra six sided dice, also called a d6, on a roll. The most dice you are allowed to roll is nine. Some feats require adrenaline to activate them. If you have a lot of adrenaline, you can exchange six adrenaline for one spotlight. More adrenaline is gifted by the game master, called a Director in this Outgunned game, as a reward for doing exceptional things. You might be gifted an adrenaline when you make a great sacrifice, induce strong emotions, have an idea that rocks the story, everyone cheered what you did, etc.
Spotlight. Every character starts the game with one spotlight. You can have at most three spotlights at the same time. You can spend one spotlight to gain a success without rolling dice, to remove a condition, to save a ride that is about to be destroyed, to barter with the Director to do something you normally couldn’t, or to save a friend who lost at the death roulette and is about to die. After you spend the spotlight on most things, flip a coin. Heads you spent the spotlight and it’s gone. Tails you immediately regain the spotlight as if you hadn’t spent it. The only spotlight expense that works differently is when you used the spotlight to save a friend. If you saved someone and flip tails, they gain the spotlight. Maybe they’ll save you next time, who knows. How to gain spotlight. The two main ways to gain a spotlight are that you can say your catchphrase to conclude an epic, dramatic scene, or you can invoke your flaw to make your situation incredibly, terribly worse. If it’s not cool or impactful enough, the Director might give you nothing or an adrenaline instead of a spotlight. You can spend six adrenaline to gain one spotlight.
The circumstances of the scene can affect your roll. If you’re setting up the roll favorably or making a smart choice, the Game Master, also called the Director in Outgunned, might reward you with one extra dice to roll. If you’re acting recklessly or the circumstances are against you, the Director might make you roll with one fewer dice.
Rides. In Outgunned, your character can drive bikes, cars, boats, jet skis, helicopters, planes, tanks, and any other type of vehicle. Each ride has a speed stat of zero, one, two, or three that represents how fast your starting speed at the start of a chase is. Rides start out with armor, which you can track on your character sheet. They can lose armor as a consequence of rolling a failure, if you land the ride poorly after a jump, or if an enemy attacks you. Once your ride has been hit three times, it is out of armor and begins to smoke and is harder to steer. If the ride is hit one more time, it bursts into flames and blows up. Any hero still on board when a ride blows up loses six grit. Rides that have the armored ability, like tanks, start with three extra armor. Heroes can repair rides in scenes where they’re out of danger. Roll Focus and Fix during a time out. If you succeed at critical difficulty, the ride recovers one armor. If you succeed at extreme difficulty, the ride recovers two armor. If you succeed rolling focus and fix at impossible difficulty, the ride recover all lost armor.
Chases. One cool thing about Outgunned that not many tabletop roleplaying games have is official mechanics for how chases work. There are two scores to track during chases: Need, and Speed. Need represents the objective of the chase, such as the heroes need to escape, or the heroes need to catch the villain. Need is a number you can whittle down, like grit, or hit points. You’re actually building up to it, but it’s a similar idea. Need will range between six and eighteen, averaging ten plus or minus two. Speed represents how fast the heroes are going. Vehicles, called rides in Outgunned, each have a speed stat that is how fast they start out going during a chase. This speed stat ranges between zero and three. At the end of each turn, the heroes fill in as many need boxes as their ride’s speed. For example, if you have a car with a speed of one, at the end of that first turn, you’ll fill in one box of need. Chases have action and reaction turns just like combats. During your action turn, you can try to boost your speed by pushing on the gas pedal, or finding a shortcut by rolling nerves plus survival to go off road, or you can decrease your enemy’s speed by hanging out the car window and opening fire on them. You would roll nerves plus shoot to fire at them. Decreasing your enemy’s speed number mechanically increases your speed because it’s a relative pace between the two rides. Chase actions that succeed on a critical difficulty, three matching dice, increase your speed by one. Chase actions that succeed on an extreme difficulty, four matching dice, increase your speed by two. If you fail to get even a basic success, two matching dice, on a roll during a chase, describe how your ride’s speed decreased by one. Reation rolls made during a chase are dangerous, which means that when a hero fails a roll, they also lose grit. There are some example of rolls you can make during a chase on page 153, such as suddenly stepping on the brakes by rolling nerves plus cool, while everyone else rolls nerves plus awareness. If your speed ever drops below zero, the Director can erase an already filled in Need box. If your speed ever hits five, you’re going super fast. All action rolls at speed of five or more are gambling. If you reach a speed of six, that is top speed, and the driver has to suffer a minus one to all of their rolls, rolling with one fewer dice as you struggle to control the ride. Once you have filled in all the need boxes, the chase is over. If you don’t succeed at a chase, some potential consequences are that your ride lost all its armor and explodes, or the heroes lost all their grit and pass out, or the chase countdown ran out and the enemies got away or caught you. For Directors, if a chase has gone on for three turns, you can roll a dice and if the result is higher than the players’ speed, the chase could end there. There’s a list of complications to throw at your players during a chase on page 160. These special actions are things Directors can do with clearly defined consequences if the heroes fail. You can do them after 3, 6, and 9 need boxes. The players receive an adrenaline, and the Director does the special action on the list.
Helping allies. If you give up rolling your dice to help an ally, they can get one of three options. The Director picks which option happens. The first option is a plus one, which means an extra dice as they roll. The second option is an automatic success without rolling any dice. The third option is that in a situation where the friend had no chance of success and wasn’t even going to be able to roll the dice, they now have a chance to roll.
Double difficulty and alternatives for success. The double difficulty roll on page 64 of the rule book is an example of one mechanism for making more difficult rolls feasible. With double difficulty, you break up a single roll into multiple thresholds. The player rolls once but is looking for two successes amongst those rolled dice. A double difficulty basic success roll requires two basic successes. This means the player needs two dice to have the same number, twice. Like one set of threes and one pair of fours. If the player gets one of the successes they need, they can avoid part of the consequences. If they get both of the sucesses they need, they can avoid both consequences. An example situation where a double difficulty roll can be applied is if the player is trying to catch a data drive with secret information in their hands mid air while a thug is diving to tackle them. One success can apply to catching the data drive, and the other success can apply to avoiding the mid air tackle. Double difficulty rolls are just one example of how you the Director can break down difficult and complex scenarios into multiple individual challenges. There are two other ways.
Degrees of success. A second method to make more difficult rolls feasible is that you can also grant degrees of success, such as the example given on page 65 where on a challenge to search for weapons the players can use, the player who got a basic success finds a chair they can break a leg off of to use as a bat, while the player who got a critical success finds a pistol taped to the underside of a drawer.
Three smaller successes equal one larger success. A third method to make more difficult rolls feasible is to add three smaller successes up to be worth as much as one greater success. For example on page 67, the rule book discusses how three basic successes can combine into one critical success, and three critical successes can combine into one extreme success. So double difficulty, degrees of success, and combining three smaller success into one larger success are all alternative conditions the Outgunned rule book suggests Directors can use to determine success.
Weak spots. There are three types of enemies in Outgunned: goons, bad guys, and bosses. If you’re fighting a really tough boss and things aren’t going your way, players, consider trying a roll to find their weak spot. It takes an action roll, which is basically like not getting to attack that turn. You roll your focus and your detect number of dice. The difficulty is equal to the enemy’s defense. If you succeed, the Director has a table they can randomly generate right in that moment what the enemy’s weak spot is. For Directors, that’s on page 147. Each weak spot on the table grants the heroes plus one dice to a specific way to attack the enemy.
Re rolling. Re rolling is sort of a strategy topic. Page sixty eight suggests that players should reroll at least half of their rolls. There’s no guaranteed right answer and the choice to reroll or not depends on the situation and the player’s assessment of risk, so I’ve put it at the end of this how to play guide. Re rolling doesn’t cost any resources in Outgunned. On page 68 the rule book says that for rolls where players get at least a basic success, which means at least one pair of matching numbers, they can choose to reroll the dice that didn’t match. If they reroll the failed dice and get more of that matching number, that’s great, they got that new level of success on the roll. If they reroll the failed dice and don’t add any extra dice to their pair, then not getting a better result loses their former success. Losing a basic success means you can’t spend it to mitigate the grit loss. Remember, if you got at least a basic success, then failing on a critical doesn’t hurt as much. Rerolling a second time is called going all in. On a first reroll you lose one of your successes. On an all in re roll, you lose all of your successes. There are feats and gear that grant the player what’s called a ‘free reroll’ in a specific situation. This phrase, ‘free reroll’, means when rerolling fails to add any more dice to the match, the player doesn’t lose that initial success. So it’s free because you don’t risk losing your initial success. There’s no possible cost.
Let’s take a moment to talk about probability. There are four difficulty levels: basic, critical, extreme, and impossible. Basic difficulty needs two dice to match numbers for the player to succeed. Critical difficulty is cleared with three of a kind. The rule book says a Director, which is what Outgunned calls Game Masters, should in general set all rolls at critical difficulty. An extreme difficulty needs four dice to get the same number to pass. The impossible difficulty requires five dice to show the same number for the player to succeed.
There’s a probability table on page 67. The rule book lists how likely it is to succeed at each of the four difficulty levels for players rolling two through nine dice. If you’re running Outgunned as a Director, you can take a look at that table to pick the probability of success that is appropriate for a player’s roll. The rule book recommends usually going with the critical difficulty where three dice match. If you look at the basic difficulty, getting two numbers to match is 91% likely to happen when rolling five dice, so it makes sense that a 91% chance of success isn’t what the rule book recommends. But looking at the table carefully, it’s worth noting that although most tabletop roleplaying games average about sixty to eighty percent chance of success when a player attacks or does a skill, Outgunned at critical difficulty lists a 21% chance of success on five dice, 37% chance of success on six dice, 54% chance of success on seven dice, and 70% chance of success on eight dice. The extreme difficulty is 2% likely to succeed on five dice, 5% likely to succeed on six dice, and 11% likely to succeed on seven dice. So if rerolling didn’t exist, or your players don’t know to do it, then when a player rolls their five dice there would be a huge drop off between a 91% chance of success to get two matches, a 21% chances of getting three, and a 2% chance of getting four matches on five dice.
This probability spread is probably why rerolling is an option granted to the players. With rerolls, a critical success happens 47% of the time with five dice, 75% of the time with six dice, 89% of the time with seven dice, and 99% of the time with eight dice. The extreme difficulty that had an 11% chance of succeeding with one roll now has a 51% chance of success on seven dice after a reroll. So as the Director, do look at the reroll column in that table. The players have no resource they spend and run out of that limits how often they reroll, so the reroll roll columns for probability prediction probably will get used a lot during play. Unless your players don’t re roll, for some reason, I mean people make choices, and then they are really out of luck.
Extra actions. If you score more successes than were required, then you can do extra things. An extra basic success means you can take a free bonus quick action. Quick actions include grabbing or throwing an item, reloading a weapon, reaching partial cover, etc quick things. An extra critical success lets you take an extra full action. Full actions include breaking through a door, getting behind total cover, finding a clue, etc things that take moderate effort. If you get an extra extreme success, you can do a free bonus cool action. Cool actions include jumping off an exploding building without getting hurt, hitting a tiny target while you were running, hiding a tiny listening device on your sworn enemy, etc unbelievably cool and difficult actions. Some feats can be activated by an extra action. You can also use your extra action to help a friend. For example if you and your friend were jumping in between buildings with a critical difficulty rating and they got a failure and you succeeded twice, you can give your second critical level success to your friend to both jump safely across the gap and both land on the building.
Heat. Heat is a mechanic for playing Outgunned long term as a campaign. The pressure on the characters changes based on how they’re doing. When the heroes fail an objective or the villain wins at something, the heat reflects that. Things happen at different heat numbers, like at heat six all heroes add a lethal bullet to their death roulette, at heat nine all enemies have one extra feat point, at heat twelve all heroes get one more adrenaline and a lethal bullet, etc. Firebreathing Kittens plays oneshot one session adventures so we won’t be using the heat mechanic, but it’s cool to mention that it exists and is available to help Directors run longer campaigns.
Creating your hero for playing Outgunned involves making about ten choices. You’ll choose a role and a trope, which will determine your attribute and skill points. You’ll choose three feats, which are listed in your role and trope. Your role will also give you some gear to pick from. And lastly you’ll mark one adrenaline, one spotlight, and one cash, and all new heroes get two free skill points wherever they like. You’ll write all of these details and your character’s personal data on your character sheet.
Let’s create an example hero together, Michelle Breton, a non player character from the episode Rewind To Remember. She’s a half elf artificer who is currently lost in a different dimension. I pull up the character sheet and start writing on it. There are ten roles to pick from. The role that most matches an artificer is probably The Brain. Brians get one point to their focus attribute and one point each in ten skills, so I write those on the character sheet. The ten skills that I boost by one point each are: drive, leadership, speech, style, detect, fix, heal, know, dexterity, stealth. Next we choose two from the six listed feats. Page 52 explains what those six feats do, and, reading them, it seems like Mastermind, where we can repeat one roll of any kind, ignoring all negative ones from conditions and circumstances looks good. And so does Scientist, which lets Michelle choose a STEM discipline (i.e.: engineering, chemistry, botany, etc.). Michelle’s specialty is machines. Gain a free re-roll for all rolls regarding your chosen discipline. The Brain role also gives Michelle some gear, a portable computer, a notebook, and a pencil. After filling in some personal data, such as her name, job as a researcher, age as an adult, catchphrase and flaw, we’re done with the role section of making a character. I like her catchphrase, which is, “With the right lever, I’ll move the world.” As an adult, Michelle has no advantages and no disadvantages, but if you’re roleplaying as a kid or someone older, they get special customizations described on page 38.
The next part of character creation is to choose one from the eighteen tropes. Some example tropes are bad to the bone, jerk with a heart of gold, lone wolf, trusty sidekick, free spirit, vigilante, etc. Michelle has definitely had some moments where when everyone else is hyped, she’s spotted something she needs to point out that unfortunately ruins the moment. That cynical streak can be useful to a team’s survival, though, so this trope called Party Killer is worth having on the crew. Choosing a trope lets you put a point into an attribute, I choose the nerves attribute, instead of the crime attribute. We also get one point each in the eight listed skills, which are force, stunt, cool, shoot, leadership, awareness, stealth, and streetwise. We also pick one feat from the four listed, picking Head On A Swivel, which gives Michelle a free re-roll when preempting dangers or ambushes, or trying to locate lurking enemies.
Lastly, we mark one adrenaline, one spotlight, and one cash, and all new heroes get two free skill points wherever they like. I put those two skill points in the fix skill and the know skill. Michelle didn’t start with a weapon, so I can spend her one cash to buy a pistol on page 103, and fill in the weapon’s stats of zero, zero, zero, negative two for its melee, close, medium, and long range modifiers. The weapons page says all weapon purchases come with one magazine of ammo, and if this is during character building, page 57 says that starting character creation weapons start with two magazines of ammunition. One magazine starts in the weapon ready to be fired, and the second is written on the character sheet by filling in one of the bullet placeholders. Michelle Breton is a completed character, voila, done.
I like how fast it is to create a character in Outgunned. It reminds me of Smash Up or No Place Called Home, where you pick two things and put them together and you’re done. There is an alternative strategy you can use when creating a character if you want to spend a bit more time. That is to pick three skills you want to be amazing at, from the list of twenty skills, and find a role and a trope that gives you the most points in those three skills. Each point is a dice you get to roll when doing that thing. After making a few character sheets, that’s the method I ended up going with, honestly. It’s nice to be good at the three skills you’ll do most often.
Here's some character building strategy for when you make your character. During the game, your actions are going to be you rolling your choice of trait + your choice of skill 's number of dice. Specialized gear can boost certain types of actions with an extra dice. The feats let you get a free reroll at the types of actions you're good at. The normal difficulty is that you'll want to get three dice to match one another. You'll need a reroll usually to succeed at getting three matches with five dice. So I just want to point this out here: the average success rate on a not-rerolled critical challenge for five dice is 21%. Twenty one percent chance of success means a seventy nine percent chance of failure. That's why you want to pick the role and trope that boost the attributes and skills you're gonna be using and give you access to feats that let you reroll the types of actions you're gonna be doing, and a gear that gives that type of action one extra dice. Let’s say you want to build a James Bond type character who succeeds most times he flirts. If you build a character with 1 dice in the smooth attribute and one dice in the flirt skill, and no gear to give you +1 dice and no feats to reroll when you flirt, you'll be bad at flirting, James Bond. With your two dice you would have a 0% chance of successfully beating a critical difficulty roll which requires getting three matching dice. But if you want to build a James Bond who is good at flirting, you absolutely can with this system. Pick a role and a trope that give you three in the attribute smooth and three in the skill flirt, so that your base dice is six, pick a gear if you can that gives you +1 dice on flirting rolls, and pick a feat that lets you reroll flirting actions for free, you're at seven dice with a free reroll, you have an 89% chance of succeeding at critical difficulty when you flirt. So that is something I am pointing out about character building. Build a character with points in the trait and skill you think you’re going to use the most, look for gear that will give you an extra dice to roll when you do that skill, and look for traits that will give you a free re roll when you do that type of action.
For players in my upcoming Outgunned game, when you build your character, please follow the starting character rules, and get an additional five cash to spend on your choice of gear. Also gain two skill points to assign to the skill or skills of your choosing, one feat of your choice, and one extra adrenaline.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Outgunned in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Outgunned in action. We encourage you to find the Outgunned rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Juneau and Muriel help unravel Newson’s past while fighting off deadly plants. Will Muriel’s elemental magic kill them all? Bodies Botany and Bleeding Hearts is an actual play podcast of Dragonbane.
Juneau and Muriel help unravel Newson’s past while fighting off deadly plants. Will Muriel’s elemental magic kill them all? Bodies Botany and Bleeding Hearts is an actual play podcast of Dragonbane.
How to play Dragonbane
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Dragonbane. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Dragonbane game at home.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Attributes
- Skills
- Pushing
- Conditions
- Dragons, demons
- Boons, banes
- Initiative
- How to attack
- Zero hit points
- Sneak attacks
- Actions and reactions
- Armor
- Weapon durability
- Movement
- Terrain
- Encumbrance
- Resting
- Magic
- Building a character
Game category. Dragons, demons, and player characters of fantasy races. Magic, mystery, and adventure. Dragonbane is a tabletop roleplaying game designed in the mirth and mayhem roleplaying style. Mirth and mayhem means there is room for laughter and a pinch of silliness, and also brutal challenges for adventurers to face in combat. Dragonbane is a translated and updated version of the Scandinavian game Drakar och Demoner, first released in 1982. Its main author Tomas Harenstam intended Dragonbane to facilitate fast and furious play, with less prep time than other d20 based ttrpg systems. Players embody characters whose professions give them specialized skills and weapons, to roll four, six, eight, ten, twelve, or twenty sided dice to fight against enemies such as harpies, minotaurs, giants, manticores, griffins, wights, trolls, and of course, dragons.
Attributes. Your character has six attributes: strength, constitution, agility, intelligence, willpower, and charisma. The character’s ability to do everything from wield their weapon, to sneak undetected, to barter with a shop keeper, to how many hit points they have, is derived from their numbers in these core attributes. You’ll determine those attribute numbers by rolling dice during character creation, and I’ve gone through an example of character creation at the end of this how to play guide to show you how attribute points are rolled. But basically, the higher the number, the better your character is at that thing. Here’s an example of the attribute number ranges. A five in the strength attribute would mean you’re not great at lifting or carrying things. Your inventory would be scant, and you’d get over encumbered easily. A ten is pretty average for an attribute. A sixteen in the strength attribute means you’re really strong, and are way better than a regular person at brawling and axes.
Skills. Every Dragonbane character has a number in thirty skills. Some example skills are the agility attribute based acrobatics skill, the charisma attribute based persuasion skill, the intelligence attribute based languages skill, and the strength based brawling skill. To see if you succeed when doing one of your skills, roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. If the dice result is the same as or lower than your skill level, you succeed at what you were trying to do. If the dice shows a number higher than your skill number, then you failed.
Here is an example skill roll. You want to spot something hidden. Your spot hidden skill is a 14. You roll a d20. If the dice is a 14, 13, 12, 11, etc, down to 2, you see the hidden thing, yay. If your dice is a 15, 16, 17, 18, or 19, you don’t see the hidden thing. The higher your skill number, the more likely you are to succeed. If you fail, that might impact the story. Not only do you not see the hidden thing, which could allow an enemy to deal extra ambush damage to you, but also it might cost you more time, risk, or gold to achieve your goals. Failure never stops the story completely, but it is expensive to some of your consumables.
Pushing. Failing a skill roll doesn’t have to be the end. You could choose to push, which means gaining a condition in exchange for rerolling the dice. To push, first explain how the condition you’re choosing to gain results from the action you’re performing. You can’t choose a condition you already have. And then roll your dice again. Whether or not your new roll succeeds, you have gained that condition. A small note, if the first dice was a twenty, a demon roll, it can’t be pushed.
Conditions. There are six conditions, one for each attribute. The conditions are: exhausted for strength, sickly for constitution, dazed for agility, angry for intelligence, scared for willpower, and disheartened for charisma. For as long as you have the condition for that attribute, roll it with bane, meaning roll two dice and keeping the higher of the two numbers, whichever is worse. You can recover from conditions by resting.
Here is an example of pushing to gain a condition. You went fishing as part of a diplomatic delegation with a prince. The fishing roll was an 11, and you have a 10 in fishing, it’s a failure of a fishing trip. The prince is getting pretty frustrated because you and him haven’t caught anything and it has been hours. You’ve been out since the crack of dawn, and it’s getting hot, a trickle of sweat runs down your skin, and the flying bugs are swarming, and it’s really unpleasant here on the water with no shade. If you two could just catch one thing, you could go back in to shore and the fishing trip would have been a diplomatic success. The happy prince would be more likely to continue the marriage negotiations with you, lots of good stuff, all hinging on this one rod and reel. So you decide it’s worth it to push. You name a condition, sickly. You explain how this condition results from the action you’re trying to do. The action is that you are going to bait the hook not only with those fancy designer reusable lures, but you’re going to actually bait the hook with a live bait. It’s gross and you feel a bit sickly, but the live bait gives you another chance. You roll again. A nine! Success! You and the prince finally catch something, turning the fishing trip into a good day. The giant pike you pull on board is an excellent platter on the royal dinner table tonight, facilitating smooth communication between the political parties. However, if someone sneaks poison into your portion during the dinner tonight and you have to roll a constitution attribute check to see if the poison hurts you or not, the sickly condition bane means that you would have to roll two dice and keep the worse, higher number.
Rolling a dragon. When you roll a 1 on the d20 dice, that’s called rolling a dragon. It’s good. You want that to happen. In combat, rolling a dragon is a critical hit. You can choose from one of three combat effects for rolling a dragon: doubling the number of dice rolled for your weapon’s damage dice, or immediately performing a second attack, or if you’re doing piercing type damage you could choose to ignore armor on this attack. Outside of combat, rolling a dragon is also great. It can be interpreted a number of ways by your game master. One example is that if you were making a perfomance check, you impress not only the target but also everyone around you. A crowd gathers because of how cool you are. A second example is that if you were doing a seamanship skill check to navigate the ocean, not only do you succeed and the reach the port successfully, you also shaved off twenty percent of your travel time, arriving early. An action can be performed faster than usual when you roll a dragon.
Rolling a demon. When you roll a 20 on the d20 dice, that’s called rolling a demon. A demon roll can’t be pushed. Outside of combat, like on a skill roll, rolling a demon means the roll not only fails, it also has an additional negative effect such as you damage yourself or someone else or an item, or you make a fool of yourself in front of everyone, or you make a lot of noise. In melee combat, rolling a demon means you miss your target, you cannot push the roll, and you roll a d6 to see which of the negative effects on page 46 happen. The d6 table is: one drop your weapon. Picking up a dropped weapon costs an action. Two the enemy gets a free attack that can’t be parried or dodged. Three your weapon gets stuck and requires a strength roll that takes an action to pull the sword from the stone. Four you accidentally threw your weapon, and have to go move to it and then spend an action to pick it up. Five the weapon gets damaged and attacks with banes until it’s repaired. Six you hit yourself with your weapon. That was the melee combat effect of rolling a demon. The ranged combat effect of rolling a demon is on page 49 and is similar, with appropriate differences such as a ranged demon roll can make you run out of ammunition, and have to get more before you can use your ranged weapon again. For magic users, rolling a demon means you will roll a d20 on the magical mishaps table on page 60 to see if your character is now dazed, or suffering a strange magical effect such as vomiting frogs every time you lie, or that any gold or silver you touch now withers into dust. Rolling a demon when casting magic can result in summoning a literal demon.
Boons and banes. A boon means that you roll two dice and keep the lower one. That’s a good thing. A bane means that you roll two dice and keep the higher number. That’s a bad thing. For example if you have a boon on your myths and legends roll, instead of rolling one dice and trying to get equal to or lower than your 10 skill number, you get to roll two dice. If either dice is a 10 or a 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, etc, you succeeded and remember that myth or legend you were trying to recall.
Initiative means turn order. At the start of a round of combat, everyone draws from a deck of cards whose cards are numbered one to ten. Number 1 can go first, number two can go second, etc until number 10 goes last. A round of combat, where everyone gets a chance to perform an action, lasts for ten seconds. After the round is over, a new round begins and everyone draws an initiative card again. There are six rounds in one minute, so after one minute you will have drawn initiative six times. If a monster has multiple attacks, it might be drawing multiple initiative cards.
Surprise. If you and your allies surprise attack an enemy, you and your allies can pick and share any initiative card you choose. The targets you’re surprising draw from the remaining cards.
Waiting. You can choose to wait instead of acting on your initiative. To wait, swap initiative cards with another player character or NPC who has a later initiative card than you. You can’t swap initiative with anyone who has already taken their turn or who themselves had chosen to wait, earlier in the round.
How to attack. Everyone can move and can perform one action on their turn during combat. If you choose to attack, use the skill for the type of weapon you’re using.
Here is an example of a melee attack. Melee attacks must be made within two meters of the target. Brynri is in the grid space next to her target, a bear that leapt out of the forest and swiped its claws down her friend. She draws her knife as a free action. The knife skill on her character sheet is ten. To see if she hits with her knife attack, Brynri’s player rolls a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. If the dice result is the same as or lower than the skill level, she hits. So on a 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, etc, her knife hits. If the dice shows a number higher than her skill number, then she fails. So on an 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, etc, her knife misses. For this example, Brynri rolled a 7, and her knife hits. How much damage every weapon does is listed on page 74 of the rule book. Knives do a d8 of damage. Brynri’s player rolls an eight sided dice and gets a four, meaning her knife attack dealt four damage to the bear from the knife itself. She also gets a damage bonus equal to her weapon’s attribute. Knives have the attribute of agility, so if Brynri’s agility was really high, she would get to add a damage bonus onto that four damage. But her agility attribute is only 11, so her damage bonus is zero. To summarize that attack, Brynri rolled a 7 on her d20, which was below her 10 knife skill so her attack successfully hit the bear. Her damage bonus is zero and her knife roll was a 4 on the d8, so she dealt 4 piercing damage to the bear with that successful knife attack.
There are situations where you get special bonuses on your attack. For example if you roll a dragon, which is a 1 on a d20, then that is a critical hit. You can choose to either double how many dice you roll for damage, or immediately perform a second attack against another enemy, or ignore armor on the critical hit. Another special combat bonus happens when you attack a target who is laying prone on the ground. Prone targets are hit with a boon and the attack gets an extra d6, a six sided dice, of damage.
Here is an example of a ranged attack. Brynri’s friend Liam has a short bow. He wants to help out and attack the bear, too. He is at more than two meters and less than 30 meters away from the bear, so he doesn’t have to roll with a bane on his short bow attack. Liam can see the bear clearly, so he doesn’t have to roll with a bane for the target being partially obscured. His bow skill is 12. He rolls a d20 to see if his arrow hits. On a 13, 14, 15, 16, etc, the arrow would miss. On a 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, etc, the arrow would hit. He rolls a 5, so his attack hits. The weapon table on page 75 says that short bows deal a d10 of damage, so he rolls a ten sided dice and gets a five. His damage bonus is plus one, so five plus one is six piercing damage to the bear when his arrow hits it.
If he had rolled a one on the d20 dice to hit, that’s awesome. When you roll a dragon for ranged attacks, you can choose to either double how many damage dice you roll, or ignore armor on the attack. If he had rolled a twenty on the d20 dice to hit, that’s called rolling a demon, which is bad. There’s a mishap table on page 49 that Liam would have had to roll on to see what negative thing happened, such as dropping his weapon, running out of arrows, or hitting an ally with that arrow instead.
Zero hit points. What happens if, during a fight, your character reaches zero hit points? They fall to the ground prone, can’t move, and can’t do any actions. Each turn afterwards, they make a death roll. Death rolls can’t be pushed. Roll a d20 and compare the result to your constitution attribute. If the number is equal to or less than your constitution, then that is one success. For example, if your constitution is 14 and you roll a 14, that’s a success. A 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, etc is also a success. Rolling a dragon, a one, counts as two successes. If the number is greater than your constitution, then that is one failure. For example, with a constitution of 14, a 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 would all fail. Rolling a demon, a 20, counts as two failures. Note that if an enemy hits you and damages you when you’re making death saving rolls, that hit counts as a failed death roll. If you reach three failed death saving throws, then your character dies. Your Game Master will hopefully present you with some NPC options for NPCs you can play as for the rest of the session. If you reach three successful death saving throws, then your character rallies. You recover a six sided dice, also called a d6, of hit points, and stop making death rolls, and your failed death roll number resets. It’s possible that being at zero hit points left you with a severe injury. Roll against your constitution attribute. A d20 dice result higher than your constitution is a failure. A d20 dice result equal to or lower than your constitution is a success. If you succeed, you’re fine, you didn’t suffer a severe injury. If you fail, roll on the severe injury table on page 51, which contains a list of injuries, how they effect your character, and how long it takes to recover from them.
Rally. If your friend is down on the ground within ten meters of you and is making death rolls, you can help them with the rally action if they can hear you. A successful persuasion skill roll will let your friend move and act like normal, although they still have to make death saving throws. Sometimes, being able to move and get out of the way of an enemy to prevent themselves from getting hit can be really helpful. You can try to rally yourself, which works by rolling against your will attribute at bane, which means that you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number.
Healing. If your friend has zero hit points, you can roll the healing skill to help them. A successful healing roll gives the friend a d6 of hit points, and they stop making death rolls and roll to see if they got a severe injury. If you don’t own bandages, your healing skill roll is made at bane, which means that you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number.
Instant death. I mentioned earlier that enemies might still be attacking and hitting you while you’re making death saving throws. If they reduce you to your maximum hit point score in the negative direction, your character dies instantly. From a strategy point of view, that’s one reason why rallying and moving out of the way of continued attacks can be a good idea.
Sneak attacks and ambushes. There is a mechanic for sneaking up on enemies during a fight. Sneak attacks are between one individual player character and one individual enemy. First, make a roll using your sneaking skill. When you are within melee combat distance, which is two meters for most enemies, roll with bane, meaning you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number. Further than melee distance, roll normally. If the result was higher than your sneaking skill, then you weren’t stealthy enough and the enemy saw you coming. Draw initiative, and start combat. If the result on the twenty sided dice is equal to or lower than your sneaking skill, you succeeded, and your attack has the key word of being a surprising attack. Pick any initiative card you want between one and ten. Gain a boon on the attack, which means rolling two d20s to hit and keeping the lower, better result. If you are using a subtle weapon during your surprising attack, roll one extra dice, for example two d8 instead of one d8, for damage.
Ambush. An ambush is a sneak attack that can be made against more than one enemy. It works when you hide and wait for the enemies to come close to you. Each enemy makes an awareness skill roll to see if they spot the ambush or not. Every enemy that fails gets the bottom initiative card, starting at ten and counting up.
Melee and ranged attacking are two of many actions you can choose to spend your action on during your turn. The other action options are: Dashing, parrying, dodging, picking up an item, equiping armor, unequiping armor, first aid, rallying, breaking down a door, picking a lock, using an item, activating an ability, casting a spell, helping an ally, and a one round rest.
Dashing. Spending your action dashing lets you move twice your movement rate in one round. For example if your movement is normally eight meters, if you dash then you can get sixteen meters in one turn. Dashing takes your action, so you can’t attack and dash.
Parrying. You can use your action to parry on an enemy’s turn during a round. If you parry, then you can’t also attack on your turn because you used your action to parry. Parrying a ranged attack requires a shield. You can’t parry if you’re prone on the ground. Monster attacks can’t be parried. To parry, what happens is first you were hit by an attack while you were holding a weapon or a shield. Declare that you are going to parry before the attacker says how much damage they’re doing to you. Roll a d20 and see how it compares to your skill level with your weapon. If you were holding a shield, roll against your strength based melee skill, because there is no shield skill. If your result is equal to or less than your weapon skill, then your parry works. If your result is greater than your weapon skill, then your parry missed. If you succeed, then you can move both yourself and the enemy two meters without counting towards anyone’s movement for the round or triggering any free attacks. Instead of taking damage from the enemy’s attack, on a successful parry, you take no damage and the weapon or shield takes the damage for you, reducing its durability. If the weapon or shield gets reduced to zero durability, then it can’t be used again until it is repaired with a successful crafting skill roll.
Dodging. You can use your action to dodge on an enemy’s turn during a round. If you dodge, then you can’t also attack on your turn because you used your action to dodge. You can dodge while laying prone on the ground. You can also dodge monsters. To dodge an incoming attack, first declare that you’re dodging before the enemy says how much damage they’re doing to you. Roll your evade skill. If your result is greater than your evade skill, then your dodge missed, and you still get hit by the attack. If your result is equal to or less than your evade skill, then your dodge works. You evaded the attack and take no damage. You can move up to two meters in any direction without triggering a free attack from an enemy. The attempt to dodge consumes your turn, and you can’t attack.
Picking up an item. If you want to pick up an item or weapon from the ground, that takes your action. You can’t attack that turn.
Equipping and unequipping armor. If you want to equip or unequip armor or a helmet during combat, it’s going to take your entire action for that turn. It might be worthwhile in some situations, though, because armor restricts your movement.
First aid. If you have a friend who is at zero hit points, you can roll for the healing skill on your turn as your action. This might result in saving your ally’s life. But it will take your entire action for that turn.
Rallying. You can use your persuasion skill to rally your friend who has zero hit points to be able to move and take actions like normal. They still will make death rolls every turn, but being able to rally and then move out of the way of future enemy attacks can sometimes be very useful because every attack they receive while at zero hit points counts as a failed death roll.
Breaking down a door. Doors have hit points in Dragonbane. Attacking one to break it down is going to take your full action for the turn.
Picking a lock. You can roll your sleight of hand skill to try to pick a lock. Owning lock picks means you don’t have to roll with bane, which is when you roll two d20s and keep the higher, worse number. If your result is equal to or less than your sleight of hand skill, then you pick the lock If your result is greater than your sleight of hand skill, then you fail to pick the lock. Either way, trying to pick the lock takes your whole action for that turn.
Using an item. If you want to drink a potion or use some other item that’s within two meters of you, that takes your entire action for the turn.
Activating an ability. You can use an innate or heroic ability as your action for a turn. If you do, you can’t also attack that turn because activating the ability took your action.
Casting a spell. Most spells are considered actions. There are some spells that take less than one action, and some spells that take more than one action, and those are labeled on the individual spell. You have one action per turn, so if you cast a one action spell, which is most of them, you can’t also attack with a weapon on your turn.
Helping an ally. You can spend your action to give an ally a boon on their roll in the same round. A boon means they roll two d20s and keep the lower, better, result.
Reactions. A few of the action options listed above, such as parrying an incoming attack and dodging an incoming attack and some spells, are reactions. Reactions happen on the enemy’s turn but use your action for the round. If you’ve already gone in the round, then you can’t use a reaction such as parrying or dodging. If you’ve parried or dodged, then you can’t do any other action when it comes to be your turn.
Free actions. Dropping to the ground and shouting a few words are free, and do not cost your action for the turn. You can only do one free action and it has to happen in turn order, so if when it gets to be your turn, you shout a few words, then you can’t also drop to the ground. Drawing your weapon is a free action.
Armor. Wearing armor lets you take less damage from physical attacks. Subtract the armor rating from the incoming damage. For example, if you were going to take 3 damage, but your armor has a rating of 1, you would only take 3 minus 1 is 2 damage. Each armor has a note for how much it limits your movement. They might also have a note about the types of damage they are better at protecting against. There are three physical damage types in Dragonbane: bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing.
Weapon durability. Each weapon on the weapons table has its own durability score. If your armor can completely negate the incoming damage down to zero, then the attacking weapon takes the damage instead. For example if you had an armor rating of 3 and the incoming damage was negated down to zero, the sword that swung at you would take the 3 damage to its durability. If the sword’s durability drops to zero, the sword breaks. A broken weapon can be repaired with a successful crafting roll. Roll a d20 dice. If the result equals or is less than your crafting skill, you repair the weapon. If the result is higher than your crafting skill, you failed to repair the weapon.
For example, if the combat earlier had been against an enemy with armor instead of a bear, it would have gone like this. Let’s say that they were attacking a demon with an armor score of 4. Attacking this demon enemy would be very dangerous for a person wielding a knife. Brynri’s 4 damage that she dealt would be completely canceled out by the demon’s armor score of 4. Her knife would take the 4 damage instead, reducing its durability number from 9 to 5. If the knife’s durability drops to zero, then the knife would break. A broken weapon can be repaired with a successful crafting roll.
Movement. Everyone can move and can perform one action on their turn during combat. Distances in Dragonbane are measured in meters. The movement score on your character sheet is how many meters the character can move in a round of combat. Six things can affect movement, and those are: dashing, crouching, leaping, doors, enemies, and free attacks. If you want to move twice as far as you normally can, say that you’re using your action this round to dash. If you want to drop to a crouch on the ground or get up, you can make those movements for free, but only on your turn in the initiative. If you want to leap across a horizontal distance, make an acrobatics skill roll. If you’re successful, then you can leap up to half of your movement rate. If the distance is a quarter of your movement number, you don’t have to roll acrobatics to succeed. Doors. Opening an unlocked door and going through it costs half your movement. Enemies. If you want to walk past an enemy, they have to be either at zero HP or on the ground, or else they stop your movement by blocking your way. Free attacks. If you start within or travel through the area within two meters of an enemy and try to make a movement that would take you away from that enemy, roll for your evade skill. Evading doesn’t take your action, but if it fails, the enemy gets a free melee attack against you that can’t be parried or dodged. If you end your movement purposefully within two meters of the enemy, they don’t get a free attack. If your movement was involuntary, such as being thrown past them in the air or sliding down a slope, involuntary movements don’t trigger enemy free attacks.
Terrain. If you are moving through a cramped cave with a low ceiling, through rough terrain, or through a dimly lit area, these environments affect your movement. Cramped spaces with low ceilings make it difficult to swing melee weapons such as swords. All melee and subtle weapons except for piercing weapons get a bane on all rolls, which means that you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number. Rough terrain such as swamp water up to your knees or thick forest underbrush means when you try to move, you have to roll an acrobatics check. If you fail, you stop moving and fall prone. Dimply lit environments cause a bane to all attacks, which means that you roll two dice and keep the higher, worse, number.
Encumbrance. Except for your weapon, items that are larger than can be concealed in a closed fist count towards your inventory. Your inventory size before encumbrance is half your strength rounded up. If you have more items than that in your inventory, then you are over encumbered and would have to make a strength roll every time you try to move. Fail the strength roll, and you can choose to either stop moving or drop items until you’re down to half your strength rounded up number of inventory items. All people carrying someone else are automatically over encumbered.
Resting. Resting is how you recover hit points and willpower points. The shortest rest is a round rest, when you take a turn off in combat to get your breath back, understand the situation, and strengthen your resolve. A one round rest takes your full action for that turn in combat. Recover a d6 of willpower points, but don’t recover any hit points. That’s a round rest. How about a stretch rest? When you see the rule book refer to a stretch rest, a stretch means fifteen minutes. You take fifteen minutes off to recover a d6 of willpower points and from one condition. You also either recover one d6 of hit points on your own, or two d6 if someone succeeds on a healing roll to heal you. The healer can’t rest if they’re healing you, and they can only heal one person per stretch rest. You can round rest and stretch rest once each per six hour shift. Those are round rests and stretch rests. What are shift rests? When you see the rule book refer to a shift rest, that means six hours. When you are in a safe location resting for six full hours, you recover all your hit points and willpower points and recover from all conditions.
Magic. If you are roleplaying as a mage in Dragonbane, then you can add a school of magic as a skill to your character sheet. The three schools of magic in the core rule book are animism, elementalism, and mentalism. Your number is derived from your intelligence attribute. The base chance derived from your intelligence on page 25 is also the maximum number of spells you can prepare during a shift rest from the list of spells you’ve learned and written in your grimoire. Magic tricks don’t count towards your prepared spell number. Learning a new spell and recording it in your grimoire takes one shift, which is six hours long. You can cast a spell from your grimoire that you haven’t prepared, but it takes twice as long. If you lose your grimoire, you lose all your spells. Mages aren’t compatible with metal. If you’re wearing metal armor or holding a metal weapon, your spells all fail to be cast. You can carry small metal items in your inventory and still cast spells. If you roll a 20, a demon roll, when casting magic, roll on the magical mishap table.
To cast a spell, spend willpower points based on the spell’s power level, and roll for your skill level in that school of magic. The power level of the spell is one half the number of willpower points it takes to cast the spell. For example a power level one spell takes two willpower points to cast. If a spell doesn’t say its power level, it costs two willpower to cast. If you’re out of willpower points, you don’t die like you could if you run out of hit points, but you can’t cast any more spells without draining your own life force. To drain your life force, roll a dice of your choice, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, etc. The number you roll is how many willpower points you gain and have to immediately spend or else lose, and is also the number of damage you take to your hit points after the spell is cast. Casting a spell takes your full action during your turn, or on an enemy’s turn if it’s a reaction. All the spells listed in the general magic section can by learned by any mage.
Here is an example of casting a spell from the school of animism. You want to cast lightning bolt on your turn in combat. The spell’s text says it takes an action. First, spend twice as many willpower points as the spell’s rank. Lightning bolt’s rank is two, so you spend four willpower points. Then, fulfill any spell requirements, which for lightning bolt is making a gesture. The spell’s text says its range is up to 40 meters, so you gesture at an enemy twenty meters away. Lastly, roll a d20 dice against your skill in the magic school of animism. Your skill number, which is based on your intelligence attribute, is 12. You roll an 11, so your spell succeeds. You call down a bolt of lightning and the spell’s text says the enemy suffers two d8 damage. You roll two eight sided dice and get nine total, so the enemy takes nine damage from your lightning bolt. There’s more text in the lightning bolt spell for additional enemies that get hit, if there were additional enemies present.
Here is an example of casting a spell from the school of mentalism. You want to read someone’s thoughts. The spell’s text says it takes an action. First, spend twice as many willpower points as the spell’s rank. Telepathy’s rank is 2, so you spend 4 willpower points. Then, fulfill any spell requirements, which for telepathy is saying words and making a gesture. The spell’s text says its range is up to 10 meters, so you point at a person 9 meters away, and mutter words at them. Lastly, roll a d20 dice against your skill in the magic school of mentalism. Your skill number, which is based on your intelligence attribute, is 10. If you were to roll an 11, 12, 13, 14, etc, your spell would fail. You roll a 10, the same number as your school so your spell succeeds. You can hear the surface thoughts of your target. Telepathy lasts as long as you concentrate.
Here is an example of casting a spell from the school of elementalism. You want to summon an undine. The spell’s text says it takes a stretch, which is fifteen minutes. First, spend twice as many willpower points as the spell’s rank. Undine’s rank is three, so you spend six willpower points. Then, fulfill any spell requirements, which for undine is having some water available, saying words, and making a gesture. The spell’s text says its range is up to 4 meters, so you pour some water on the pond in front of you. Lastly, roll a d20 dice against your skill in the magic school of elementalism. Your skill number, which is based on your intelligence attribute, is 14. If you were to roll a 15, 16, 17, 18, etc, your spell would fail. You roll a 2, so your spell succeeds. You summon the undine. The spell’s text says that it stays around for a stretch, which is fifteen minutes. The undine has the movement, HP, weapons, and resistances listed in the spell text. While here, it looks like a tidal wave whose crest is shaped like a watery woman. The undine is a monster during combat, see page 84 for general monster combat rules, and acts independently on its own initiative, staying in sight of the mage who summoned it and following their commands as a free action. You can make free actions to tell your undine what to do on your turn in the initiative.
Let’s roll an example character, Brynri Flintkind, a non player character who appeared in a few adventures. Creating a character in Dragonbane means picking something for thirteen categories. These categories are: name, age, appearance, kin, innate ability, profession, attributes, trained skills, heroic ability, weakness, gear, memento, and calculate your derived ratings.
Brynri’s name is Brynri and she’s a two hundred and ninety seven year old mountain dwarf. Her appearance is that she’s four feet five inches tall, has graying golden hair, and weathered tan skin. As a dwarf, she’s got an analogous kin in Dragonbane, but for people in my game who will be adapting a variety of fantasy creatures to this setting, pick the kin that has the innate ability that best suits your character. In Dragonbane, dwarves come with the innate ability that they are unforgiving. Unforgiving means that when dwarves attack an enemy who has dealt at least one damage to them in the past, they get a boon, which means they roll two dice and keep the lower, better number.
You will also be picking a profession when you create your character. For Brynri, she’s a retired adventurer who now runs the antiques shop called Mountain Matron's Relics. That matches with profession number eight, merchant. This profession determines your character’s key attribute, skills, heroic ability, and gear. Merchants have the key attribute of charisma. Merchants also have the trained profession skill list of awareness, bartering, bluffing, evade, knives, persuasion, slight of hand, and spot hidden. Keep those in mind for later; six of your trained skills have to come from your profession’s list. And the gear of a dagger, sleeping pelt, torch, flint, tinder, hemp rope, donkey, d6 food rations so rolling that now that’s three, and d12 silver so rolling that now that’s five silver. I add those on the character sheet.
Let’s determine Brynri’s attributes. We are going to roll four six sided dice, also called d6. We will roll four d6 and remove the lowest dice, leaving the three highest dice. We’re going to do this six times, and that will determine our six attribute scores. You must assign your attributes in the order you roll them, and then at the end you can swap any two. For Brynri, that’s 12 strength, 14 constitution, 13 agility, 9 intelligence, 17 willpower, and 16 charisma. Note that if any of the rolled results are higher than 18, their maximum starting number is just 18. We can swap two scores if we want. Those actually look pretty good so I’m going to decline the swap, which was phrased as a “you may” thing. She does get some attribute modifiers because of her age. Her strength, agility, and constitution are reduced by two, and her intelligence and willpower are increased by one. So her actual numbers are 10 strength, 12 constitution, 11 agility, 10 intelligence, 18 willpower, 16 charisma. Those are the numbers I write on the character sheet. I can also write down her movement, which is calculated by adding an agility modifier to her racial movement number. Based on how she is a dwarf with an agility of 11, page 25 shows that Brynri has a movement speed of 8. Weapon and agility damage bonus. On page 25 we see that because her strength is 10, her strength based weapon damage bonus is zero, and because her agility is 11, her agility based weapon damage bonus is also zero. Because Brynri’s hit points are equal to her constitution, that means her HP is 12. Because Brynri’s willpower points are equal to her willpower, her WP is 18.
There is a table on page 25 that tells you what your base chance is for a skill based on the attribute related to it. The attribute is abbreviated in parentheses after the skill. For example acrobatics parentheses a-g-l means that the agility attribute determines your base chance for your skill. Let’s go through Brynri’s attributes one by one to determine her base skill chance. Her strength is 10, so her skill at crafting, axes, brawling, hammers, spears, and swords is a base chance of 5. The next attribute, constitution, doesn’t determine any skill base chances. Her next attribute, agility, is an 11, so her base chance is 5 for the skills acrobatics, evade, hunting and fishing, riding, sleight of hand, sneaking, swimming, bows, crossbows, knives, slings, and staves. Her next attribute, intelligence, is 10, so that means her awareness, beast lore, bushcraft, healing, languages, myths and legends, seamanship, and spot hidden all have a base chance of 5. The next stat, willpower, doesn’t determine the base chance of any skills. Her last stat, charisma, is a sixteen, so Brynri’s base chance is 7 for the skills bartering, bluffing, performance, and persuasion.
Trained skills. Training a skill doubles its base chance. Six of your trained skills have to come from your profession’s list of trained skills. Page 24 has a table of age and number of trained skills. For old people like Brynri, she has six profession trained skills and six we are free to choose. From the merchant’s trained skills list, I will pick these six: awareness, bartering, bluffing, evade, persuasion, and spot hidden. On the character sheet, there’s an empty diamond next to the skill that you can fill in to show it’s a trained skill, and you can double the base chance number that was there. We have six left. I’ll reserve one for the weapon we end up going with. Or actually, based on her starting gear of a dagger, that should be knives. I mark the diamond next to the skill and double knives’ base chance. For the other five, let’s go with knowledge type skills that older people might know more about than younger people. Beast lore, bushcraft, hunting and fishing, languages, and myths and legends. I double their numbers and mark the diamond next to those skills.
Merchants have the heroic ability of treasure hunter. The profession page doesn’t expand on what that means, so, using control f to find the words treasure hunter later in the rule book, it says that treasure hunter has a requirement of having a bartering skill of at least 12, which Brynri does. Hers is 14. Treasure hunter says it takes 3 willpower points. At a crossroads, activate treasure hunter to learn the direction of greatest treasures.
Weakness. There’s a list of weaknesses to pick from on page twenty six. For Brynri, the person who created her character said that her flaw is that she has a hard time relying on others too much. Quote, “If I want it done right, I have to do it.” We can use that as her weakness, or we can use number twenty from the list, haughty.
Memento. There are a list of mementos your character can start with on page 27. If you don’t already have a memento, pick one or roll one from that list. Brynri’s carrying number 17, a bone whistle.
Encumbrance. Your inventory size without encumbrance is half your strength rounded up. For Brynri, that’s five items. Hmm, but she’s currently carrying seven. That weapon, the dagger, doesn’t count towards encumbrance, but that’s still six. Good thing she has that donkey, which can carry ten items. Without that donkey, she would be over encumbered and would have to make a strength roll every time she tried to move. Fail the strength roll, and you can choose to either stop moving or drop items until you’re down to your inventory size number, which is half your strength rounded up. All people carrying someone else are automatically over encumbered.
Armor. Brynri didn’t get any starting armor. As a starting character with less than a gold to her name, she doesn’t have enough money to afford to buy any of the armor listed on page 73. So I guess that’s that. No starting armor for Brynri.
Brynri does have a dagger that she started with. It’s the last thing on the character sheet we haven’t filled in. The dagger’s stats are on page 74. I write the dagger stats on the character sheet. It’s a one handed weapon grip, whose range is determined by strength, that deals an eight sided dice or d8 of damage, has a durability of 9, a value of 1 gold, a supply of common, and has the features of subtle, piercing, slashing, and can be thrown. Subtle weapons grant a boon when performing sneak attacks. Piercing and slashing damage are damage types, which matters for some armor’s ability to reduce incoming damage types. And lastly the dagger can be thrown as far as Brynri’s strength, which is 10, and means she can throw it 10 meters.
For players in my upcoming Dragonbane game, when you build your character, please follow these starting character rules. Please pick your choice of any armor, page 73, and any clothes, page 75 of the rule book. We will represent how we’re higher level than starting characters by increasing our heroic abilities and gear. Please pick two extra heroic abilities, for three heroic abilities total. You will need to meet their requirements. For gear, please pick any three things of your choice from the gear section, pages 72 to 81. We will also make advancement rolls, which are explained on page 29 and which increase your skill number to make you more successful when rolling dice to do a skill check. I estimate that at our power level in the year, you should make 25 advancement rolls on the skills of your choice. A skill can advance to a maximum of 18.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Dragonbane in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Dragonbane in action. We encourage you to find the Dragonbane rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Wilford, Hefty, and Deli have been invited to a special opening of a market but something else has also arrived, and it's draining the life out of the place. Death Comes to Market is an actual play podcast of the Fudge Lite system.
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A silent monk exhorts Belle, Hefty and Newson to visit a remote monastery in search of a powerful, cursed relic. They’ll lose their memory and their voice, but will they keep their life? 'Dust To Dust' is an actual play podcast of Into The Odd.
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Join Freya, Bobby and Edgar as they try to solve the clues and escape being marooned on a deserted island using the play mechanics of Tiny Pirates.
Join Freya, Bobby and Edgar as they try to solve the clues and escape being marooned on a deserted island using the play mechanics of Tiny Pirates.
Bombs at the ready, Alastair, Edgar, and Divan go on an adventure to find what they really desire, finding the truth and a few bombs along the way.
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Join Freya, Hefty and Grumm as they help solve mysterious disappearances in the town of Briairfen using the DC20 game system.
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Wilford and Norbert reunite for the first time in years after the fateful summer they met as kids. Instantly, they are transported back to rediscover events that left indelible marks in their lives. Rewind To Remember is an actual play podcast of the Tales From The Loop TTRPG.
Wilford and Norbert reunite for the first time in years after the fateful summer they met as kids. Instantly, they are transported back to rediscover events that left indelible marks in their lives. Rewind To Remember is an actual play podcast of the Tales From The Loop TTRPG.
How to play Tales From The Loop
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Tales From The Loop. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Tales From The Loop game.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into five sections.
- Game category
- Combat rules
- The “broken” condition
- Attributes and skills
- Building an example character
Game category. Tales From The Loop is a game where the players role play as ten to fifteen year old kids solving a mystery in an alternative history version of the late 1980’s. The town you live in has an advanced science facility whose adult employee researchers are investigating a powerful phenomenon. What the scientists have learned is out of reach from the kids, and the parents don’t talk about their work with their children. Effects from the artifact they are working on have spilled out into the town, though, including escaped robots, gravity distortions, and time loops. You and your friends seek to escape the never ending homework and nagging parents of your dull everyday life to take part in something meaningful, magical, and possibly a little bit dangerous. You risk being injured, imprisoned, broken-hearted, or changed by the troubles you overcome to solve the mysteries that have captured your fascination. But in general, although the land of the loop is dangerous, kids cannot die in this game.
Combat in Tales From The Loop involves describing your what you’re trying to do and then rolling multiple six sided dice, also called d6, to see if any of the rolled numbers were a six. If one or more of the dice show a six, that’s a success at normal difficulty. You rolled a six, so you accomplished what you were trying to do. If none of the dice show a six, that’s a failure. If you fail, you don’t accomplish what you were trying to do and you might get hurt or scared. The more dice you roll, the better your odds of getting a six. For example, you are more likely to succeed when rolling five dice than when rolling only two dice.
Troubles can be normal difficulty, which requires one six to succeed, or extreme difficulty, which require rolling two sixes to succeed, or almost impossible difficulty, which require getting three sixes to succeed. Your game master will tell you the trouble difficulty during your roll.
If you roll more than the needed number of sixes, your character sheet’s skills section might list a few special effects that you can spend the extra successes on, to buy. Spending an extra success to buy an effect is a way to get even more than you asked for from a situation, on top of succeeding you also get a fun in-game bonus.
Are you unsure your roll will succeed? A friend can help your dice roll if they narrate how their character is helping in the scene. To help, describe what you do, and your friend gets an extra dice. Only one person can help per roll. The person who helps is bound to the outcome of the roll. If the roll fails, then you both suffer the same consequences from it failing.
If you don’t roll enough sixes and fail a particularly important roll, it’s not the end. You can choose to spend a single luck point after seeing that your roll failed. The luck point lets you reroll a single failed dice. You can only spend one luck per roll. After each game session, your luck refreshes back to full.
Sometimes getting help from a friend or rerolling a single failed dice by spending a luck point isn’t enough. What option do you have when you’ve failed a roll that you really wanted to succeed at? You can push. Pushing is when you gather up all the dice that failed and try rolling them again. You can only push once per roll, and you have to do it right away before the consequences are narrated. The cost of pushing is that you gain a condition first, and then try to push second. Conditions include being scared, being injured, etc. Your future rolls will be at negative one success for each condition you gain. If your push fails, you can’t push again that roll.
Let’s do an example of a combat roll. Your character is being chased by an escaped robot. You have cleverly run up to the top of a hill. You say that you want to turn and shove the robot so that they fall down the hill. The game master says it’s a normal difficulty. That means you need one six to succeed. You roll your body ability number of dice, 2, and your force skill number of dice, 1, for 3 dice total. You get a 2, a 4, and a 6. There’s a six, so that’s a success. You shove the robot down the hill. What if you had rolled a 2, a 4, and a 5? Your friend could help you, by distracting the robot by yelling, “Hey!” When a friend helps you, add a dice. That’s now a 2, a 4, a 5, and a 6, success. Or, if your friend helping you didn’t work, you could gain a condition to push. To push, first gain the condition of your choice, then reroll the failed dice. You choose to injure your leg by kicking the robot down the hill. Now, because you’re injured, future rolls need two sixes to succeed on normal difficulty. But you get to reroll your failed dice, and get a 1, a 3, and a 6. The robot tumbles down the hill.
If everything goes wrong and you still fail a roll, your action fails and the situation changes for the worse. For example, the robot catches up to you, and lifts you into the air. Your game master might also tell you that you’ve suffered a condition. If you had pushed, it’s possible to gain two conditions from one failed action.
What happens when a character has zero hit points in Tales From The Loop? There aren’t really hit points in Tales From The Loop. The characters, who the rule book calls kids, can’t die. But they can gain a negative condition, such as being upset, scared, exhausted, or injured, which subtracts one of your rolled sixes from your dice rolls. For example if you roll five dice and one of them was a six, with a condition, none of them are. That normally successful roll has turned into a failure. But if you had rolled two sixes, you still could have succeeded. Each new condition you accumulate is another negative one, another six removed from your dice rolls. That means negative one for the first condition, negative two for the second condition, etc. Having three or four conditions means it’s pretty unlikely you’ll succeed at anything you do, so, consider pausing the adventure to heal. If you ignore that and keep going and gain a fifth condition, that one is special. The fifth condition you gain is called being broken. Broken characters automatically fail on all rolls and need to go get healed. You can heal by going and seeing your anchor person, and by role playing a scene with your anchor person of how they help you.
Attributes and skills. Every Tales From The Loop character has four attributes and three skills per attribute. You can think of attributes as general categories, and you can think of skills as specific ways to apply that general category. When you try to do something in the game, success or failure will be determined by rolling the number of dice you have in the best matching attribute and skill, and seeing if any of the dice rolled a six.
Attributes are like general categories of things you’re good at, and skills are specific ways to apply what you’re good at what you’re trying to do. There are four attributes: body, tech, heart, and mind. Body is how good your character is at jumping, running, sneaking, and climbing. Tech is how well your character understands machines, robots, digital locks, and programming. Heart is your character’s willingness to make friends, trust the right people, persuade others, and be believed when lying. Mind is your character’s ability to find weak points, understand situations and creatures, solve riddles, and have the right background knowledge at the right time. So body, tech, heart and mind are the four attributes.
Each attribute has three specializations, called skills. For the body attribute, the skills are sneak, force, and move. You can use your body to be stealthy, or to be strong, or to run fast. They’re different ways to apply your body attribute. For tech the skills are tinker, program, and calculate. Tinkering is building a mechanical item, programming is writing computer code, and calculating is understanding technical systems. For heart the skills are contact, charm, and lead. Contacts are who you know and can network to. Charm is whether you can persuade or befried or manipulate people. Lead is your ability to make scared or sad or confused people follow your advice. For mind the skills are investigate, comprehend, and empathize. Investigation can uncover hidden clues, comprehending means you have the right piece of information at your fingertips, and empathizing is the ability to understand what makes someone tick and what their strengths and weak spots might be.
Each point you have in the attribute and skill that best match what you’re attempting to do will give you one dice to roll. Add up your points in the general attribute and specific skill, and that’s how many dice you roll. For example, if you want to investigate to find a hidden clue, you would roll the number of dice you have in your mind attribute, and the number of dice in your investigate skill. If any of them show a six, you found the hidden clue. If you want to charm a non player character, you would roll the number of dice you have in your heart attribute, and the number of dice you have in your charm skill. If any dice show a six, you charmed them well. If you want to adjust a robot’s exoskeleton, you would roll your tech attribute’s number of dice and also your tinker skill’s number of dice. See a six on a dice? Success, you adjusted that robot’s exoskeleton. If you want to sprint away from a growing sinkhole, you would roll your body attribute points number of dice, and your move skill’s number of dice. If any of your dice are a six, you accomplish your goal of what you were trying to do.
When you build a character in Tales From The Loop, you will be building the ten to fifteen year old version of your character. This is explained because this game features time loops, so, if your character is normally older, imagine you’ve gone back in time to a younger version of yourself. There are fourteen choices to make when making a character. You will choose your type, age, attributes, luck, skills, iconic item, problem, drive, pride, relationships, anchor, name, description, and favorite song.
Type is similar to class in other games, and includes bookworm, computer geek, hick, jock, popular kid, rocker, troublemaker, and weirdo. Each type has its own page in the rule book, and it lists options for all the other choices. Let’s build a computer geek type character.
We’ll pick their age to be twelve years old. We will distrubute a number of points equal to our age in the four attributes, with a minimum of 1 point and a maximum of 5 points in each. There are four attributes: body, tech, heart, and mind. Body is how good your character is at jumping, running, sneaking, and climbing. Tech is how well your character understands machines, robots, digital locks, and programming. Heart is your character’s willingness to make friends, trust the right people, persuade others, and be believed when lying. Mind is your character’s ability to find weak points, understand situations and creatures, solve riddles, and have the right background knowledge at the right time. Let’s distribute 5 points in tech, because our computer geek has a lot of experience programming computers. Twelve minus 5 is 7, so we have 7 points left to distribute. This computer geek’s minimum stat should probably be body, because they sit at their computer desk all day instead of exercising, so let’s put only one point in body. Six points left. Let’s put three each in heart and mind. Distributing attribute points is complete. We’ve got 5 in tech, 1 in body, 3 in heart, and 3 in mind, for a total of 12, which equals our age.
After attributes are luck. You start with 15 minus your age number of luck points. For our 12 year old, that means 15 minus 12 equals 3 luck points. The older your character is, ranging from 10 to 15 years old, the more attribute points they have, but the less luck they have.
After luck is skills. Every character starts with 10 points that you can distribute as you’d like among your skills. You can raise a skill to a maximum of 3 in your type’s key skills, or a maximum of 1 in any non-key skill. For example, the computer geek type’s key skills are calculate, program, and comprehend, so you are allowed to put 3 points in each of those if you’d like. All other skills have a maximum of 1 point. You have 10 points total to spend. Let’s spend our points like this: 3 points in calculate, 3 points in program, 3 points in comprehend, and 1 point in tinker.
After skills, we pick our iconic item. Computer geeks can choose between a computer, a pocket calculator, and a toy lightsaber. Let’s pick a pocket calculator. Remember that you’ve got your iconic item in the game, because if you can role play a way to use it while tackling your problem, you can add two bonus dice to your roll. For example with the pocket calculator, it’s reasonable to add the two bonus dice when you’re using math for your calculate skill to understand a machine. The applications of when you can use an iconic item are pretty specific, and only work in situations where using that item makes sense. If the iconic item was a skateboard, you could add two bonus dice when using your move skill on the ground, but not when using your move skill to climb a tree. Skateboards aren’t helpful when climbing trees.
After iconic item, we pick a problem. For a computer geek type character, the rule book suggests a few problems to pick from. Maybe the tough kids hit you, or your parents are always arguing, or the person you like doesn’t know you exist. You would pick one of those three or make up your own problem. Let’s make one up, for example that the quiz bowl placement competition is coming up and our character wants to do well enough to earn a spot on the quiz bowl team. Pick a problem that you want to explore during the upcoming mystery. When you pick your problem, you’re telling your game master to put your character into this kind of trouble.
After picking a problem, we pick a drive. For a computer geek, the rule book suggests that maybe they’re driven by loving to solve puzzles.
After picking a drive, we pick a pride. For a computer geek, one of the listed prides is that this type of character is proud of how smart they are and their grades in school. You can use your pride once per mystery to automatically succeed. You can wait until after you see the results of the dice to decide if you’re going to use your pride. You don’t have to say it before you roll.
After picking a pride, we define our relationships. For people in my upcoming Firebreathing Kittens game, you’ve already got some non player characters you know. For people playing Tales From The Loop at home, there are some suggests NPCs, like a friend Lina who told you that strange creatures have moved into the cooling towers. She thinks they’re aliens. Or a friend Elisabeth, who has built a computer program that cracks codes. Together, you used the computer program to listen to a scrambled radio communication. Some guys, who called each other fish names, were talking about her mother as, quote, “one of the targets.”
After defining our relationships, we pick an anchor. For computer geek type characters, the rule book suggests an anchor of one of your parents, or your science or math teacher, or the owner of a local comic shop. If things go poorly during the mystery and your character is suffering from a condition, you can go role play a scene with your anchor person. By allowing them to take care of you, and relying on them for support, comfort, and care, that scene can heal all conditions affecting your character.
After picking an anchor, we name and describe our character. For people in my upcoming Firebreathing Kittens game, you are building the version of your character that fits this game, so you already know their name and description. For people playing Tales From The Loop at home, there’s a helpful section here that recommends names like Monika, Martin, Shannon, and Daniel. They might even get a nickname.
After naming and describing our character, we pick their favorite song. I think it’s gotta be Simple Minds, Don't You (Forget About Me).
That’s everything! By picking the fourteen things: type, age, attributes, luck, skills, iconic item, problem, drive, pride, relationships, anchor, name, description, and favorite song, we have created a character.
For players in the upcoming game session I will be GMing, please follow the standard rules of character creation. No changes, no modifications, no additional experience. It’s early in our season, so your characters are low level.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Tales From The Loop in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of the mechanics in action. We encourage you to find the Tales From The Loop rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
We discuss our feedback for the rules mechanics from the tabletop roleplaying games Dungeoncaster, Vaesen, the two solo play systems InkSea: The Abyss and Exclusion Zone Botanist, Risus Epic, Travel Sized Role Playing Game, Roll For Shoes, and Escape From An Endless Ikrala (a setting expansion of the game Liminal Horror).
A mysterious message in a bottle leads Newson, Hefty and Alastair to a remote island, where they must confront the past, the future and themselves in order to help some orphaned children. This is an actual play podcast of Travel-Sized RPG.
A mysterious message in a bottle leads Newson, Hefty and Alastair to a remote island, where they must confront the past, the future and themselves in order to help some orphaned children. This is an actual play podcast of Travel-Sized RPG.
Creepy Kralas is an actual play podcast of Trapped in an Endless Ikrala featuring Muse, Wilford, and Edgar. The adventurers risk their lives in a horrific store full of hungry furniture mimics. Ikrala is compatible with the game Liminal Horror.
Creepy Kralas is an actual play podcast of Trapped in an Endless Ikrala featuring Muse, Wilford, and Edgar. The adventurers risk their lives in a horrific store full of hungry furniture mimics. Ikrala is compatible with the game Liminal Horror.
How to play Ikrala
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Ikrala. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Ikrala game at home.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Abilities: STR, DEX, CTRL
- Combat rules
- Zero hit points
- Building a character
Game category. Ikrala is a fantasy survival horror procedural dungeon crawl through a massive artificial constructed place, resembling something like a mall, a casino, an airport, or a furniture store. On the one hand, there is a horror to a place with no natural light where every square foot has been planned to slow you down, lure you into forgetting what time it is, and not realize you are spending forever there. On the other hand, there is a fantasy aspect to being in the store overnight, jumping onto the display bed, picking up any container off the shelf and eating out of it. Ikrala melds the horror and fantasy together into a massive nearly endless store where everything is yours for the taking, but everything is also out to kill you. Like the movie Beauty and the Beast where the furniture and cutlery has a mind of its own, or like a mimic treasure chest that eats the adventurers who open it, players will fight floor after floor in their quest to find the item they’re shopping for, and then find the elusive parking garage exit.
How to play. Players roll a 20 sided dice, also called a d20, and compare the result to their ability score. If the dice is equal to or lower than their ability, they succeed. For example, a dice roll of 10 and an ability of 11 would mean the player succeeded on what they were trying to do. If the dice is higher than the ability, they failed. For example a dice roll of 20, which is often a critical success in other tabletop role playing games, is always a failure in Ikrala. In Ikrala, a 1 is always a success.
Here is an example of a strength ability roll. Vera is trying to lift a dresser to block the door she and her party just came through. The dresser is heavy, and will be a good barricade for the door. But, being heavy, it is not trivial to move it. Vera’s strength ability is 11. Vera’s player rolls a d20 and gets a 6. This is a success. Vera successfully moves the dresser to barricade the door.
Here is an example of a dexterity ability roll. William is trying to sneak past a display couch that has ominously opened up to reveal a giant mouth with sharp teeth. His dexterity ability is 8. He rolls a 10, which is higher than an 8, so he fails to sneak past and the couch notices him. It licks its couch cushion lips in anticipation.
Here is an example of a control ability roll. Rut is walking along looking at items for sale when she spots a lava lamp. Its fluid motions are mesmerizing. Her player is asked to roll a control saving roll. Rut’s control is 13. Her player rolls a 13, which meets it to beat it, and Rut is able to pull her eyes away from the very interesting lava lamp motions and keep walking.
Combat rules. At the start of combat, players roll against their dexterity ability to see if they go before or after the enemies. If their dice is lower than or equal to their dexterity, they go before the enemies. If the dice is higher than their dexterity, they go after the enemies. A dexterity challenge is also used to determine if the players successfully retreat from an enemy, which is something to keep in mind. Players can make one movement and one action on their turn.
All attacks hit in Ikrala. There are no missed swings of a sword or arrows flying past the target. Attacks can deal either physical damage or stress damage. Physical damage is reduced by armor. Stress damage is reduced by stability. To make an attack, roll the weapon dice. For example you roll a d6 and get a 4 on the dice. Then subtract the target’s armor or stability. For example if the target has 1 armor or stability, a 4 on the dice minus 1 armor or stability equals 3 damage.
It is possible to be impaired or enhanced by combat scenarios. Examples of being impaired are when your character is trying to swing a sword while prone on the ground, or is attacking an enemy protected by partial cover, or if your character’s in a mental fog. When impaired, use a four sided dice, called a d4, for your damage dice instead of your weapon’s normal d6, d8, etc dice. If your weapon breaks and you’re suddenly unarmed, an unarmed strike also deals a d4 of damage, an impaired blow. An attack can also be enhanced. An example of an enhanced attack is, if your character is unaware they were in a combat scenario and a giant spider waits until the perfect moment to drop down from the ceiling and drive its fangs into you, that first sneak attack would be enhanced. You weren’t aware enough of the danger to make any motions to defend yourself, so their enhanced attack deals a twelve sided dice, a d12, of damage, instead of their normal d6, d8, etc.
When an enemy is reduced to 0 HP, it makes a morale check. If there is a group of enemies, when the first one reaches 0 HP, they must make a moral check as a group. Roll a dice and compare it to their control. If the dice number is higher than their control ability score, the enemy flees.
Reaching zero hit points. In Ikrala, when you run out of hit points, the damage starts to affect your ability stats. Damage in Ikrala is either physical type damage or stress type damage. Players have three ability scores: strength, dexterity, and control. After hitting 0 HP, excess physical damage carries over to and reduces your strength ability. Excess stress damage carries over to and reduces your control ability. After subtracting the excess damage, you then make a saving throw. If the dice result is lower than your remaining ability score, then you succeeded and don’t gain a critical injury. If the dice result is higher than your remaining ability score then you fail your saving throw, and gain a critical wound, a lasting injury, from the table on page 38. Suffering a critical injury leaves your character crawling and gasping for life. Future attacks will continue to reduce either your strength or control ability scores. If a character’s strength goes down to zero, the character falls unconscious or dies. If their control goes down to zero, the character is lost in their own mind and unresponsive.
It should be noted that in the Liminal Horror rules, which are a free rule book by Goblin Archives that the Ikrala rule book assumes you have read, the authors emphasize that although a character can die, a player should not be excluded from the table. The game master should have the player create a new character or take control of an allied non player character to immediately rejoin play.
As long as you have food, water, and proper rest, HP recovers back to full when combat ends and the characters are safe. Ability loss recovers after one week’s rest, or from taking medicine, or from receiving healing magic. If your character is without food, water, or rest, they are considered deprived, and they don’t recover HP after combat. If your character stays deprived for a full day, add one fatigue, which takes up an inventory spot.
Here is an example of a round of combat. Astrid is a teacher out to buy some school supplies for her classroom when she becomes trapped in an infinite shopping center. A nefarious floor lamp is hopping on its one leg up to her, menace in its three shaded light bulbs. First, Astrid rolls for turn order. Her dexterity is 12 and she rolls a 7, so she goes before the floor lamp. She picks up a spare television remote from the display living room and throws it at the lamp. All attacks automatically hit in Ikrala. She rolls for damage, a d4, getting a 4 on the damage dice. The floor lamp has one physical armor from the lamp shade protecting the bulb, softening the blow. The 4 on the dice minus 1 armor from the lamp shade equals 3 physical damage dealt overall. The floor lamp started with 5 HP, so it has 2 HP left. It whips its electrical cord at Astrid and makes a ranged attack. Astrid doesn’t have any armor, so she takes all 2 physical damage from the electrical cord. Then it’s back to Astrid’s turn. She pulls a bookshelf down on the lamp, dealing a d8 of damage. Even with the light shade protecting the bulbs for 1 armor, the 4 physical damage minus 1 armor is still 3 physical damage overall, eliminating the floor lamp’s remaining 2 HP. Yay, she has defeated the floor lamp! After combat, because she recently ate, drank water, and slept, Astrid heals back up to her full HP.
What if the combat didn’t go so well for our hero? Here’s an example situation where Astrid only had 1 HP left at the start of the round because she was deprived of water and, thirsty, didn’t recover from a previous combat. Instead of shrugging off the electrical cord attack’s 2 physical damage, her HP goes from 1, to 0, and then the remaining carryover damage reduces her strength ability score. Her strength score was a 9, so it is now reduced by the carryover of 1 from 9 to 8. She then makes a strength saving throw to see if she gets a lasting injury. If she rolls an 8, 7, 6, 5, etc, she will succeed. If she rolls a 9, 10, 11, 12, etc number higher than her score, then she will fail the saving roll and get critically injured. There’s a table on page 38 with injuries. It includes, for example, that Astrid would gain a leg injury that slows her down for a day, but when recovered she would gain +1 to her maximum dexterity. Another table option is that she might gain a permanent gnarly facial scar, but gain +1 to her maximum HP. The injuries each come with something a little bit positive to them in the long term.
Building a character in Ikrala involves rolling for three ability scores, rolling for HP, and listing some character details. Players roll three six sided dice, also called d6, and add them together. The first roll’s sum is your strength. Roll three more dice and add them together to get your dexterity. Roll three last dice and add them together to get your control. You can then look at them and swap any two results you think fit your character better.
Let’s roll an example character, Frida. The first roll, for strength, is a 6, a 3, and a 4, totaling 13. Frida has 13 strength. Our second roll is a 4, a 5, and a 2, totaling 11 for Frida’s dexterity. The third roll is a 6, a 2, and a 1, totaling 9 for Frida’s control. We the player know that Frida is an ice magic user. She is going to need her control ability, which is used for willpower, charm, and doing weird things, to be her highest ability. So we use our one swap to swap her strength of 13 with her control of 9. That leaves Frida’s stats at a 9 in strength, an 11 in dexterity, and a 13 in control. Next, we roll a d6 for Frida’s hit protection, abbreviated HP. We roll a 4, so Frida has 4 HP. Lastly, we list some character details for Frida. Her name is Frida. Her average background is that she’s an office manager. She manages a worker named Edith. The next detail is her style of dress, which we’ll describe as upscale. We are asked to name what it is our character is shopping for, and if they were alone. Frida was shopping for a gift for her brother, Jack, and she was alone at the time and quite confused about what to buy him because they don’t have the best relationship. Lastly, her age is that she’s quite old, but looks like a middle aged adult. And that’s how you make a character in Ikrala. All characters start with whatever items they would normally be carrying inside a store. They have 4 default inventory spots, which can increase to 10 if they get a bag. We list a few things that Frida was carrying, such as for her, a spare diamond tiara she has been working on recently and is carrying around with her because she planned to drop it off with Edith after shopping. She also has her ice magic, which we will stat like a weapon from page 35’s list of equipment. The wrench, which deals 1 d6 of damage, looks like a good analogy, because it can open and shut water pipes, and if you’ve ever had a frozen pipe in the winter, ice can certainly do that. Because she is carrying a tiara and the metaphorical wrench weapon item spot, Frida has two inventory spots left. If she finds a bag, she can increase her inventory spots from 4 to 10. Optionally, characters might start with armor or stability, it depends on your game master. Frida rolls a d3 for each, which is a d6 divided by two. The dice results say she gets 1 point of armor and 2 points of stability.
For players in my upcoming Ikrala game, please follow the rules as written for making your character, stat your weapon like a weapon on the equipment table on page 35, and then also use the optional rules to start with stability and armor. Roll a d3, which is a d6 divided by two. For example a 1 and a 2 mean 1, a 3 and a 4 mean 2, and a 5 and a 6 mean 3. The result is how much stability you have. Do that again, and this second result is your armor protection. Describe what your armor looks like, such as a helmet, a shield, a thick coat, etc.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Ikrala in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Ikrala in action. We encourage you to find the Ikrala rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Norbert, Tracey, and Hefty get roped into a dungeon delving themed cooking show! Can they avoid the traps and outcook Guy Fury? Don't Go Bacon My Heart is an actual play podcast of Roll for Shoes.
Norbert, Tracey, and Hefty get roped into a dungeon delving themed cooking show! Can they avoid the traps and outcook Guy Fury? Don't Go Bacon My Heart is an actual play podcast of Roll for Shoes.
Join us as Oliver and Grumm do their best to swim to freedom in a labyrinth of underwater treachery in this adventure powered by TSRPG.
Join us as Oliver and Grumm do their best to swim to freedom in a labyrinth of underwater treachery in this adventure powered by TSRPG.
A luxurious vacation resort becomes a watery death-trap when our heroes are betrayed by someone they trusted. Will Muse and Newson get out alive? ‘The Crab with the Golden Claw’ is an actual play podcast of Travel Sized RPG.
A luxurious vacation resort becomes a watery death-trap when our heroes are betrayed by someone they trusted. Will Muse and Newson get out alive? ‘The Crab with the Golden Claw’ is an actual play podcast of Travel Sized RPG.
How to play Travel Sized Role Playing Game (TSRPG)
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Travel Sized Role Playing Game, abbreviated TSRPG. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Travel Sized Role Playing Game.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Combat rules
- Equipment
- Annoyed, wounded, disabled, killed
- Building an example character
Game category. TSRPG is designed to be, well, travel sized. You can teach others how to play and build a character with them in under ten minutes. TSRPG can be played using any setting, anywhere, anytime. You can play it without dice, for example on a long ride, or sitting around a campfire.
Combat rules. Combats in travel sized role playing game are a series of challenges. A player can attempt a challenge to harm an opponent or to defend against an incoming attack. To resolve the challenge, the storyteller either rolls a number or picks one to themself quietly, and says the difficulty range out loud. The player picks a number. If the player’s number either matches or is within their stat number’s range of the storyteller’s number, then the player succeeds at the challenge. If the player’s pick for a number is further away from the storyteller’s number than even adding or subtracting their stat doesn’t get them there, then the player failed the challenge.
Here is an example of a challenge. A player says their character Ruben swings a sword at the dragon. The storyteller picks the number 2 and says out loud that this is a strength challenge with a range of 1 to 10. Ruben’s player guesses a number within the range. If they guess 2, they succeed. They also succeed if the number they guess is within their strength stat distance away from the storyteller’s number. If Ruben’s strength stat is 1, then guessing a 1, a 2, and a three will all succeed, and Ruben’s sword will strike the dragon. If Ruben’s strength stat is 4, then guessing 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 6 will succeed, because a guess of 6 minus the strength stat of 4 equals the storyteller’s number of 2.
Let’s do a second example challenge. Caitlin is a halfling barbarian. She’s being attacked by a charm spell from a monster, who is singing, trying to lure Caitlin to put down her battleaxe. Defending against this attack is a challenge. The storyteller thinks of the number 5 and tells Caitlin’s player that it’s a mental challenge with a range of 10. Caitlin has a mental stat of 2, so her player thinks strategically. If they answer a 1 or a 9, they won’t be taking full advantage of their range of two. A 3 should be their lowest guess because it will cover 3, 2, and 1. An 8 should be their highest guess because that will cover 8, 9 and 10. Caitlin’s player guesses 8. The range of storyteller numbers they would have passed the challenge on is 10, 9, 8, 7, and 6. Unfortunately, the storyteller thought of a 5, so, Caitlin the halfling barbarian puts down her battleaxe and falls for the monster’s charm.
Non player characters can assist on a challenge to give a +1 bonus, but they suffer from the same consequences a player character would face if they fail.
Equipment. Equipment in TSRPG is either durable, and gives a +1 bonus to appropriate challenges it’s used for, or consumable, which provides a +2 bonus on two challenges and is then consumed. Masterwork items double the numbers from mundane equipment, and magical items triple the numbers compared to mundane equipment.
In other tabletop roleplaying games that have hit points, a character might start at 10 hit points and after receiving 6 damage and then later 4 damage, go down to 0 hit points. Travel sized RPG does not have hit points. Instead, it has status effects. Characters can be annoyed, wounded, disabled, and killed. Falling prone is an example of being annoyed. Being prone might decrease your character’s physical stat by one for your next check, or until you stand up. If your character’s arm is slashed by claws, that is an example of being wounded. The slash wound could reduce your physical trait by two for the rest of the combat. Being disabled, such as suffering a head injury, could leave your mental stat reduced by one for multiple combats, for example all day. And lastly, a character can be killed, which removes them from the game. Recovering from being annoyed is something you can do for yourself. Spend your turn standing up from being prone, problem solved. Wounded characters can bandage themselves up after combat ends. Disabled characters, though, need to be helped by another character. To heal a disabled character, an ally will need to succed at a 10 point mental challenge.
The rule book comes with a table that lists the probability of success when players guess a challenge. The table lists number ranges like 1 to 5, or 1 to 30, or 1 to 100, and lists character levels like 2 stat points, or 8 stat points. Success ranges from 100% guaranteed victory to a 3% chance of succeeding. This table helps the storyteller quickly pick the number range they need for the the odds of their player guessing right to be exactly the difficulty the storyteller wants. If the characters have two stat points and you want your players to have a 60% chance of success, pick a range of 1 to 5. If the characters have five stat points and you want your players to have a 60% chance of success, pick a range of 1 to 10. If the characters have eight stat points and you want your players to have a 60% chance of success, pick a range of 1 to 15.
Travel sized role playing game characters have a physical stat number, a mental stat number, a permanent equipment, a two times use equipment, and a trait. Build a character by choosing how to allocate your stat points between your physical stat and mental stat, naming a trait that gives you +1 when acting that way, and by creating two pieces of equipment. One equipment is durable and gives a +1 to one specified stat. The other equipment is a two time use item that gives +2 to your choice of stat in the moment it’s used.
Let’s build an example character with five overall stat points. Reese is a swordfighter. She has 4 for her physical stat and 1 for her mental stat. Her trait is that she’s strong. Whenever she uses her physical strength to tackle a challenge she gets a +1 to her range. She carries a mundane durable +1 physical longsword and a mundane consumable +2 shield that can be used twice before breaking.
Let’s build a second example character with five overall stat points. Sawyer is a wizard. He has 0 for his physical stat and 5 for his mental stat. His trait is that he’s inventive. Whenever he invents, builds, and uses a new object, he gets a +1 to his range. He carries a masterwork durable +2 mental spellcasting staff and a mundane consumable +2 yellow potion that can only be used twice before being consumed.
Let’s build a third example character with five overall stat points. Callie is a thief. She has 2 for her physical stat and 3 for her mental stat. Her trait is that she’s stealthy. Whenever she sneaks or hides she gets a +1 to her range. She carries a mundane durable +1 mental stolen necklace and a magical consumable +6 throwing knife that can be used twice before being lost.
Here’s one last example character with five overall stat points. Beckett is a sentient road sign. It has 5 for its physical stat and 0 for its mental stat. Its trait is it’s heavy, and gets +1 whenever it falls over on something to solve a challenge. It carries a mundane durable +1 physical sign board and if it uses the words written on it, it can decide what it says once for a masterwork consumable +4 for the writing on the front, and again for a +4 for the writing on the reverse side of the sign.
For players in my upcoming Travel Sized RPG (TSRPG) game, please make a character with 5 points overall divided as you want between physical and mental. Your character should have one Trait, which is a single word they're +1 good at, such as stealthy, plumber, fire spells, night vision, etc. Please possess one durable equipment that gives a +1 to your choice of either physical or mental, and one consumable two-times-use +2 item.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Travel Sized Role Playing Game in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of TSRPG in action. We encourage you to find the Travel Sized Role Playing Game rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Eclectic Chocolate Dreams is an 'off the books' job for Freya, Gilda and Grumm with dangers of falling lumber, poison raspberries, puns, fireballs, explosions, tigers, and more. This episode was run using the Risus Epic RPG system.
Eclectic Chocolate Dreams is an 'off the books' job for Freya, Gilda and Grumm with dangers of falling lumber, poison raspberries, puns, fireballs, explosions, tigers, and more. This episode was run using the Risus Epic RPG system.
April Fool's Day Bonus Episode 2025. We played the solo games Inksea: The Abyss and Exclusion Zone Botanist.
For Better Ore Worse is an actual play podcast of the Vaesen system with Osmond, Hefty, and Arik in Miner's Hollow. Is Mayor Banks telling the truth that his family has been cursed for no reason?
For Better Ore Worse is an actual play podcast of the Vaesen system with Osmond, Hefty, and Arik in Miner's Hollow. Is Mayor Banks telling the truth that his family has been cursed for no reason?
Tracey, Freya, and Hefty are judging a music competition at the FBK guild when they discover that multiple mysterious thefts have been taking place! This game uses the Dungeoncaster TTRPG system.
Tracey, Freya, and Hefty are judging a music competition at the FBK guild when they discover that multiple mysterious thefts have been taking place! This game uses the Dungeoncaster TTRPG system.
March 2025 TTRPG Rules Feedback
Welcome to a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. This is our rules discussion where we discuss the rules we played in the past dozen games, for March 2025. We’ll discuss the ttrpgs Dicing With Death, Alien the official RPG, Action 12 Cinema, Here At The End, Pirate Borg, Pocket Gumshoe, CY_BORG, and Mork Borg. Let’s dive right in, reading these reviews written by our Firebreathing Kittens players and GMs.
A Mork Borg adventure that reminds one of Romeo and Juliet with prophesies, goblins, and Wilford, Muriel, and Muse working together to uncover the secrets behind two mysterious castles.
A Mork Borg adventure that reminds one of Romeo and Juliet with prophesies, goblins, and Wilford, Muriel, and Muse working together to uncover the secrets behind two mysterious castles.
How to play Mork Borg.
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Mork Borg. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Mork Borg game.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Combat rules
- Zero hit points
- Abilities
- Magic
- Omens
- Building an example character
- How to level up
Game category. Mork Borg describes itself as a doom metal album of a game. A spiked flail to the face. Rules light, heavy everything else. It’s set in a world driven insane by accurate prophecies foretelling the end of days. You’ll face goblins, trolls, and blood drenched skeletons. How will you react to the certain impending death of the world? By robbing graves for soil-stained wealth, or facing down the apocalypse, hoping it can be fought? You can play as character classes, such as the esoteric hermit, occult herbmaster, or gutterborn scum. Your character might be a nihilist, someone who stutters when lying, an inveterate bug eater, or maybe you’ll tap into the magic all around you and call down some arcane calamities of your own.
This is Mork Borg. A tabletop roleplaying game famous for its artistic rule book. Bright yellow, darkest black, blood red. I encourage you all to check out the rule book even if only from an art perspective. You’ve got nothing to lose because if you don’t like the art style, the creators offer a free bare bones edition that has all unusual layouts removed. It’s just black font on a white background. But that would be a bit sad. I first heard about Mork Borg from a conversation about which tabletop roleplaying game had the most beautiful rule book. Mork Borg and the spinoffs it has inspired are really something special. So if you haven’t browsed this rule book, give it a try. Maybe hearing this explanation of the rules will help smooth your experience. I dunno, let’s get into it.
Combat rules in Mork Borg. All the dice rolls in Mork Borg are made by the players. That includes combat turn order, players attacking an enemy, and when players are defending against being attacked. Everything. The game master doesn’t ever have to roll dice.
The word initiative means turn order during combat. A player rolls a six sided dice, also called a d6, for initiative. A one, two, or three means the enemies attack first. A four, five, or six means the players attack first. If there are multiple players, they all roll a d6 and add their agility modifiers. Higher rolls can act first.
Attacking an enemy goes like this. First, roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. Next, if you’re attacking with a melee weapon add your strength modifier to your roll. If you’re attacking with a ranged weapon, add your presence ability modifier to your roll. If the result is 12 or higher, you hit. Roll your weapon's damage dice, something like a d4, d6, etc. Lastly, if the enemy has armor, roll for the armor, which will be a d2, a d4, or a d6, and subtract the armor roll from the damage.
Defending when an enemy is trying to hit you goes like this. First, roll a d20. Next, add your agility modifier. If the result is 12 or higher, they missed you. If the result is 11 or lower, they hit you. Roll for their damage (a d4, a d6, etc). If you have armor, roll for your armor (a d2, a d4, or a d6) and subtract the armor roll from the incoming damage.
Rolling a twenty or a one on the d20 when attacking or defending are special. A twenty on the to-hit dice is a critical hit. A critical when attacking means you deal twice as much damage and the enemy’s armor or protection is lowered by a tier. A critical when defending means you get a free attack of opportunity. The opposite of a natural twenty critical success is a natural one critical failure, a fumble. Fumbling when attacking means your weapon breaks or is lost. Fumbling when defending means you take twice as much damage, and your armor is reduced one tier.
Enemies don’t fight forever in Mork Borg. If they’re at one third of their hit points, or if their leader gets killed, or half the group is eliminated, the Game Master will prompt a player to roll two d6. If the number is greater than the morale number of the enemy, they surrender or flee.
Those were the combat rules. Here is an example round of combat. There’s a prowler out, a lawless good for nothing crook banished from civilization. Low on resources, allies, and basic decency, the prowler seeks retribution, and coin. This particular one is a liar who enjoys stealing one single item from people to mess with them mentally, and they love getting the credit for other peoples’ exploits. All of those personality traits come from random tables in the rule book, which is a neat way to quickly customize your enemies. Anyway, the door to your inn creaks and the prowler pokes their head into the room where your party is sleeping, having gained access by lying to the innkeeper saying that they were a late arrived member of the party. The prowler looks around the room at everyone’s sleeping forms. They reach into a bag and remove a single item, just Keftar’s zweihander sword. The prowler smiles to themself and begins to creep out of the room. But before that can happen, let’s roll for initiative. One of the players rolls a d6. It’s a five. The players each roll a d6 and add their agility to determine their turn order. Keftar has a six and is going first, Brint has a five and is going second, and Vrakh has a two and goes third. Keftar’s sword is in the prowler’s hands, so the first thing Keftar wants to do is a strength roll to grapple the sword out of the prowler’s hands. Keftar rolls a d20 and adds their strength modifier. If it’s a twelve or higher they succeed. It’s a fifteen, success, Keftar wrestles their sword out of the prowler’s hands. Brint’s turn is next. Brint wields a whip, but when he rolls a one on the d20 dice to hit, Brint’s player roleplays that as meaning the whip is hard to wield in this small rented inn room. Brint raises the whip overhead, and it catches on a lamp. A natural one on the d20 means the weapon breaks or is lost. It’s hopelessly tangled in the lamp. The last player to act is Vrakh’s player, who fires their short bow. They roll a d20 and get a ten. Adding two from their presence modifier, Vrakh’s player whoops as they get a twelve overall, meaning Vrakh’s arrow hits the prowler. Vrakh’s player rolls a d4 and declares that Vrakh has done three damage. The GM knows the prowler is down from 8 HP down to 5 HP. They’re still above 3 HP, so they don’t ask a player to roll for the prowler’s morale check. The prowler lifts a filthy shortsword and swipes at Brint who is still tangled in a lamp. Brint rolls to defend, adding their agility to a d20. That’s a seven overall, below a twelve, so the prowler hits and deals five damage, leaving Brint with exactly zero hit points. Thus concludes a round of combat in Mork Borg.
What happens when a character has zero hit points in Mork Borg? Brint is at zero hit points, so this is a great example. Roll a four sided dice, also called a d4. If Brint rolls a 1, they’re unconscious but will wake up after d4 rounds with d4 hit points. If Brint rolls a two they’re going to lose a limb or an eye, and can’t act for d4 rounds, then after that regain d4 hit points. If Brint rolls a three, they’re hemorrhaging and will die in d2 hours unless they get treated. All tests are a difficulty rating of 16 the first hour and 18 the last hour. And lastly, if Brint rolls a four, they’re simply dead.
Thus ends the example combat for Mork Borg. Let’s talk about resting. First off, if you’re infected, you’re not going to heal at all when you rest. Instead, you’ll take a d6 of damage every day until you get healed. But assuming you’re not infected, and that you have food and water, then you can catch your breath to heal a d4 of hit points, and you can get a full night’s sleep to heal a d6 of hit points.
Every Mork Borg character has four stats. Mechanically, these modifier scores are what you add to or subtract from your d20 dice rolls. How do you know if the thing you attempted was successful in Mork Borg? Roll a dice, add your stat’s modifier to your roll, and if the number meets or exceeds the difficulty rating, you succeeded.
There are four abilities: toughness, strength, presence, and agility. Toughness is used for resisting poison, enduring heat and cold, and surviving falling. Strength is used when you’re striking with a melee weapon, grappling, crushing, or lifting something. Presence is the ability you use when aiming with a ranged weapon, perceiving things, charming someone, or wielding a power. Agility is what you add to a roll when you’re defending or dodging an enemy’s attack, balancing, swimming, or fleeing.
Here is an example of testing your ability in Mork Borg. You fall out of the window of an inn. The cobblestones below are rushing up at you. Roll a d20 and add your toughness modifier. If the result is twelve or higher, you pass. If the result is eleven, ten, nine, etc, you fail. For example, a fourteen on the dice minus one toughness is a thirteen overall. You’re fine, you land with a thud but stand up having taken no damage.
Magic in Mork Borg might be something your character is able to wield depending on which class they are. It’s present either as a power or a scroll. If your class can wield magic, then each day you roll a d4 and add your presence modifier and that’s how many times that day you can cast it. For example, if you roll a 2 and have a presence modifier of plus one, then you can use your scroll three times today. When you go to wield a power, roll a d20 and add your presence modifier. If you get a twelve or more, you cast the spell. If you get an eleven or lower, the power doesn’t work and the caster takes d2 hit point damage, and becomes dizzy and can’t use powers for an hour. If the d20 was a one, then that’s a fumble. If you fumble when casting magic, you roll on the arcane catastrophes table and one of twenty terrible things happen. It’s possible that the earth could decay around you like wet flesh. You sink three feet and cannot climb out without help. Clinging to you, screaming and biting, are d4 translucent, crayfish-like children with your face. Or it’s possible that a gnashing gap-toothed mouth splits open on your neck. It spits out your secrets and inner thoughts. And something the GM knows that the player might find out, is that it can be silenced to sleep only with blood. Or, as a last example, light itself despises you. If you gaze upon a candle, lamp, or torch, it goes out.
Omens. Omens are like the Devil’s Luck if you’ve played Pirate Borg, or Glitches if you’ve played CY_BORG. They’re a limited, daily refreshing resource you can spend to change the outcome of a dice roll. Your class will clarify how many omens you get each day or, if you don’t have a class, you get d2 omens. You can spend an omen to do one of five things. You can spend an omen to deal maximum damage with one attack, or reroll any dice, yours or someone else’s. You can spend an omen to lower the damage dealt to you by a d6. You can spend an omen to neutralize a crit or fumble. Or lastly, you can spend an omen to lower one test’s difficulty rating by four. This can really impact the outcome because the standard difficulty of things is twelve, really simple tasks are six, and nearly impossible tasks are eighteen. You can change that by spending an omen.
When you build a character in Mork Borg, you will either choose or randomly roll for a class, abilities, weapon, armor, hit points, and name. Let’s build a character together. Every character starts with a waterskin and d4 days worth of food, which rolling for it is two days of food. Let’s roll a d6 and two d12 dice for your three starting equipment. The dice show a six, a ten, and a twelve, so this character has a donkey, a sealed bottle that deals d10 damage once, and a tent. It’s optional in Mork Borg to gain a class. Let’s do that, since this is a demonstration. Rolling a d6, we’ll build the class called, six, an occult herbmaster. They begin with two d6 times ten silver, which rolling for it is eighty silver. They also get d2 omens at the start of each day, which for today is one omen available to spend.
Occult herbmasters are as tough as wood. They get three d6 plus two for their toughness, which rolling for it is ten plus two is twelve, which translate to a modifier of plus zero. Let’s roll three d6 each for the other three stats. Agility is a nine, which is also a plus zero modifier. Presence is a seven, which is actually a minus one. And lastly occult herbmaster strength is rolled at a minus two, so that would have been a fourteen but it becomes a twelve, which is another plus zero. Hit points and carrying capacity are both calculated from the strength modifier. Occult herbmasters have HP equal to toughness plus d6, so for this character that’s a, rolling for it, four. Only four hit points, oof, yes, this is a brutal game with high lethality. This character’s carrying capacity is strength plus eight normal sized items with no problem, so that means they can carry eight items such as a crowbar, lard, a scroll, or a torch, without problem. I guess a tent and a sealed bottle put this character at two. Or maybe the donkey is carrying the tent, not sure. Yeah, let’s go with that, that makes sense.
Anyway, continuing on the class page, the instructions say to roll a d2 for a weapon. That’s a two, a staff, a melee weapon that uses the strength ability and does d4 damage. Occult herbmasters also get a d2 on the armor table, so that’s a two, light armor, subtract a d2 from all incoming damage. This character is carrying a portable laboratory, and continually searches for frequently expended ingredients. Yeah, that donkey is definitely carrying the portable laboratory. It says every day, this character has the materials to create two randomly determined decoctions and can brew a total of d4 doses. If unused they lose vitality after 24 hours. Neat. There’s a table here for what could randomly get brewed. Let’s roll a d8 for today’s decoctions. A one and a six. The one is a red poison. The drinker must pass a toughness test with a difficulty rating of twelve or lose a d10 of hit points. Oof. The six is Fernor’s Philtre. It’s a translucent oil that must be dabbed into the eye. It heals infections and gives a plus two on presence tests for d4 hours. Neat. The class gives us one more thing. This occult herbmaster was, rolling for it, probably raised in an illegal midnight market. That ends all the things from that class page.
There are some optional tables on pages thirty nine to forty three, so let’s roll for them. This character gets two terrible traits which, rolling for it, they are shrewd and bitter. They have a physical impediment which, rolling for it, is that their face is resting maniac face, which makes it hard to make friends. They have a bad habit, rolling for it, they have a permanent phlegm deposit in their throat. They continuously cough, snort, and spit. They’re also in massive debt. The debt is being traded to successively more ruthless groups. The last instruction in character creation is, quote, “Name your character if you wish. It will not save you.” lol. There’s a table on the front inside book cover, so let’s roll a d6 and then a d8 for their name. This is Merkari, the occult herbmaster. Merkari has four hit points, a plus zero in toughness and agility and strength, and a minus one in presence. Merkari has a red poison and a Fernor’s Philtre, and also a sealed bottle that deals d10 damage once. Merkari’s donkey is loaded up with a tent and a portable laboratory. Merkari doesn’t have a lot of friends, partly because of their resting maniac face, partly because they’re a shrewd and bitter person, partly because they’re in debt, and partly because they continuously cough, snort, and spit. That’s Merkari.
Leveling up in Mork Borg affects three character aspects. You get more hit points, you find an item, and you change your abilities. To get more hit points, roll six d10. If the result is equal to or greater than your current maximum hit points, increase your max HP by d6. Six d10 is at least six, so the first time we level up, we’ll increase Merkari’s four hit points by a d6 for sure. Roll on the table on page 33 to see what item you find. It could be a scroll, or some silver, or nothing. You can use the scroll to cast magic, spend the silver on a better weapon, or get nothing. And roll a d6 against each of your four abilities. If the result is equal to or greater than your modifier, increase it by one. The max is plus six. But unlike most games where leveling up can only improve you, if your d6 is below your ability modifier, decrease it by one. If you roll a one on the d6, always decrease your ability modifier, to at most a negative three.
For players in the upcoming game session I will be GMing, you can triple your starting silver money so you can afford to buy a few things. We’re at ten percent of maximum power level at this time in the year, so that amount of money won’t be able to afford much, but it’s slightly more than a starting character. Also, you’re welcome to do one level up advancement, if you’d like. I do acknowledge that leveling up can decrease your ability modifiers, so you don’t have to if you don’t want to.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Mork Borg in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Mork Borg in action. We encourage you to find the Mork Borg rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Granny Kifo wants to ensure that she has the brand-new bio-compatible online device that looks like a normal pair of glasses so that her company has the upper hand. Using the new tech, new blood Muse Martinez joins Tracey Cavortae in a “hare” raising CY_BORG adventure that will leave you laughing and wanting more!
Granny Kifo wants to ensure that she has the brand-new bio-compatible online device that looks like a normal pair of glasses so that her company has the upper hand. Using the new tech, new blood Muse Martinez joins Tracey Cavortae in a “hare” raising CY_BORG adventure that will leave you laughing and wanting more!
How to play CY_BORG. Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for CY_BORG. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own CY_BORG game.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game category
- Combat rules
- Zero hit points
- Abilities
- Apps
- Nano powers
- Glitches
- Building an example character
Game category. CY_BORG is a game where you the players are pitted against the corp, the cops, and the capitalist system. There are mechanics for your character to implant cybertech, for you to hack tech using apps, to experience glitches online via your retinal com device that transfer to reality, to use drugs, for your character to become colonized by alien bacteria riding nanobots, or to become infected with the less helpful infestations of alien crabs, gills and tubes. The class you play as will impact your abilities, and include a shunned nanomancer, a burned hacker, an orphaned gearhead, and more. CY_BORG characters have five stat abilities: knowledge, agility, presence, strength, and toughness. Ability modifiers are added to your roll on a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, to determine if you meet to beat the difficulty rating to succeed. The difficulty ratings, or DR, range from 6 for a simple test, to 12 for normal difficulty, to 16 for really hard to accomplish tasks, to 18 for hurdles that are almost impossible to overcome. Roll the dice, add your ability modifier, and see if you meet to beat the difficulty rating to hack your way through the world of CY_BORG.
Let’s talk about combat rules in CY_BORG. If you’ve played Pirate Borg or Mork Borg, how to attack and defend will sound familiar. The core combat rules for the Borg games (Pirate Borg, CY_BORG, and Mork Borg) are pretty much the same. Here are the shared combat rules. I’m going to just like, read the summary of these, and then if that doesn’t make sense don’t worry, because I’ll do an actual example.
All the dice rolls in the Borg games are made by the players. That includes initiative, when players attack an enemy, and when players are defending against being attacked. The game master doesn’t ever have to roll dice.
The word initiative means turn order during combat. Players roll a six sided dice, also called a d6, for initiative. A one, two, or three means the enemies attack first. A four, five, or six means the players attack first. If there are multiple players, they all roll a d6 and add their agility modifiers. Higher rolls can act first.
Attacking an enemy goes like this. First, roll a d20. Next, add either your strength ability modifier for melee attacks or presence ability modifier for ranged attacks. If you get a 12 or higher, you hit. Roll your weapon's damage dice (a d4, d6, etc). Lastly, if the enemy has armor, roll for the armor (a d2, a d4, or a d6) and subtract the armor roll from the damage. CY_BORG adds the aiming and autofiring mechanics. If you spend a round to aim, you can either reduce the difficulty rating by two so that you hit on tens, or you can deal an extra two damage. Hits always deal at least one damage. If your weapon has autofire, written as the letter a after its damage dice in the rule book, that means hitting the first time lets you make a second attack, against either the same target or another one nearby, up to a maximum of three attacks.
Defending when an enemy is trying to hit you goes like this. First, roll a d20. Next, add your agility modifier. If the result is 12 or higher, they missed you. If the result is 11 or lower, they hit you. Roll for their damage (a d4, a d6, etc). If you have armor, roll for your armor (a d2, a d4, or a d6) and subtract the armor roll from the incoming damage. Anyone can take cover, which increases the difficulty rating by two for light cover, and four for heavy cover.
Rolling a twenty or a one on the d20 when attacking or defending are special. A twenty on the to-hit dice is a critical hit. When defending, you the player can make a free attack. When attacking, you deal double damage and reduce the enemy’s armor by a tier. Rolling a d20 to get a critical is great. The opposite of a critical is a fumble, a one on the to-hit dice. If you fumble when defending, the player takes double damage and their armor is reduced by a tier. If you fumble when attacking, then roll a d6. On a one, two, or three, you’re out of ammo. You also drop you weapon or otherwise make it unusable until you spend an action fixing things. On a four or a five, your weapon breaks. It has to be repaired outside of combat. On a six, your weapon explodes and hurts you for d6 damage and is beyond repair. Fumbles are rough.
After every combat, roll a d8 for each weapon you fired, or a d6 if you used autofire. A one, two, or three means you are out of ammo and have to reload, which costs ten percent of a weapon’s price. Reloading means it’s a good idea to keep some spare change. The last thing you do after a combat is heal a bit. Catch your breath, wipe your brow, and recover d4 hit points. You can restore a d6 of hit points also if you eat, drink, and sleep for a full night’s rest.
Those were the combat rules. Here is an example round of combat. Kei is getting their wanderlust out going on a Jupiter’s travel, riding his motorcycle down the open road, black clouds and skyscrapers rising behind him. He glances back at the city skyline in the far distance and notices much closer, a speck behind him, eating the distance between them. Kei recognizes a roadrunner following him. That sounds cute, but he isn’t Wile E Coyote, and that isn’t a bird. In the world of CY_BORG, a roadrunner is a motorcycle riding, masked wasteland scavenger rightly feared for their territorial brutality and hyper tuned, weaponized rides. The roadrunner hoists an assault rifle up to their shoulder! Kei’s player rolls a dice for initiative. A two, the enemy goes first. The roadrunner fires the assault rife at Kei. The player rolls a d20 and adds agility to defend, getting a thirteen overall. Whew, the roadrunner missed him. That’s good, because assault rifles have auto fire and if they hit once, they can attack again. It’s now Kei’s turn. He turns around and aims his shotgun at the roadrunner. Kei’s player rolls a d20 and adds their presence, and Kei and pulls the trigger. It’s a fifteen overall, the shotgun sprays the roadrunner! A shotgun deals a d8 of damage, which, rolling for it, is six damage. The roadrunner’s waster’s tux outfit gives them a slight protection from road rash but at a d2 it isn’t very effective against shotguns. Rolling, that’s only one hit point prevented by the armor. Kei’s shotgun still does five damage, depleting all hit points from the roadrunner. The roadrunner’s motorcycle swerves, fishtails, and skids to a stop in a soft shrubbery. Combat is over! Kei checks his shotgun, rolling a d8. A one, two, or three means he would be out of ammo and have to reload, which costs ten percent of a weapon’s price. It’s a four, whew, he still has some ammunition. He wipes his brow and rolls a d4 to recover 1 hit point, which is good, he had been down one from an earlier skirmish. Overall he’s feeling great. He has caught his breath, and breathes deeply of freedom as his motorcycle roars away, red tail lights shining.
That worked out pretty well for Kei. For the roadrunner, not so much. What happens when a character has zero hit points in CY_BORG? Having exactly zero hit points is called being battered. When you’re battered, roll an eight sided dice and do whatever the battered table says. The roadrunner is at exactly zero hit points, so they roll an eight sided dice, also called a d8. I will walk you through the eight possible outcomes. On a one and a two, the roadrunner rolls a d4 dice and falls unconscious for that number of rounds, then awakens with a d4 of hit points. On a three or a four, they test their presence. That means the roadrunner rolls a d20 and add their presence modifier. If they fail, they fall into a Cy-rage. Cy-rage means they go berserk, temporarily gaining a d8 of HP and attacking completely random targets twice a round with their strongest weapon. Their attacks are DR10 to hit or DR14 to defend against. They don’t stop until they’re either reduced to zero hit points, sedated, or dead. So that was a three or a four on the d8 dice for having exactly zero hit points. If the roadrunner rolls a five or a six on the d8, they’re critically injured. Roll on the body table to see what body part is destroyed. Maybe one day they can have it regrown and replaced, but for d4 rounds they are unable to act, after which they gain d4 hit points and can act again. If the roadrunner rolls a 7 on the eight sided dice for being battered, they got a hemorrhage, which means if they don’t get treated within two hours they die. Lastly, if they roll an eight, they are dead. Unless the roadrunner has money, and then, well, the medical care for the wealthy is pretty good. They have a fifty percent chance of saving you, if you can get to an emergency room and if you can pay for it.
Thus ends the example combat for CY_BORG. Let’s talk about abilities. Abilities in CY_BORG represent your character’s skills. Your character’s numbers for these abilities come from rolling three d6 and converting the roll result to a modifier score. Mechanically, these modifier scores are what you add to or subtract from your d20 dice rolls. To get your modifiers, consult the table on page forty to convert your three d6 roll to the modifier score you’ll use. For example, if you roll a one, two, three, or four, that means that ability has a modifier score of negative three. Any roll you make with that ability, you would subtract three from. Here’s a second example. If you roll a nine, ten, eleven, or twelve on the three d6 dice, that means that ability has a modifier of zero. Whatever you roll on the dice, you add zero to, that’s your result. One last example. If you roll a fifteen or sixteen, your modifier is plus two and you’ll add two to every d20 you roll for that ability.
There are five abilities: toughness, strength, presence, knowledge, and agility. The toughness ability modifier score is added to your roll when you try to survive falling, poison, and the elements. Strength is the ability modifier added to rolls that involve striking someone, grappling, lifting, and throwing. You will add your agility modifier to your roll when sneaking, dodging, driving, or autofiring. Your knowledge ability modifier is added to science rolls, when you’re using technology, or using an app. Lastly, the presence ability modifier is added to your sniping and shooting rolls, when using nano, and when charming someone.
Here is an example of testing your ability in CY_BORG. Gul is trying to sneak. She rolls a twenty sided dice and adds her agility modifier, which is plus two. If she gets a six she will succeed at a simple test of sneaking, like if the guard was asleep. If she gets a 12 she can succeed at normal difficulty sneaking, like a guard in the next room over. If she gets 16 she can do really hard to accomplish tasks, and with an 18 she can succeed at a stealth operation that would be almost impossible to overcome.
Let’s talk about apps. You character can use apps, which are cassettes with the ability to hack tech and physically affect their surroundings when inserted into a cyberdeck. Some of the apps a character can use are, for example, Nok_Nok, which opens a nearby locked door, >eRase, which cuts or copies the latest ten minutes of stored information from any type of recording or surveillance device, PathMapper, which uses nearby sensors and cameras to create a 3D map of the surrounding one hundred meters, and beaconworm, which places a tracker into any device or cybertech, enabling you to track its movements in real time for the upcoming d4 weeks. To use an app, first connect to the app, which is called jacking into the deck. When connected, all non-app actions have a plus two difficulty rating. The test to see if you use the app successfully is a DR 12 knowledge roll. If you do successfully use an app, each use adds plus one to the risk of fumbling when using apps until the next day. A fumble burns that app for the day and triggers a backlash.
Here is an example of using an app. Nur is jacked into the deck and has the app loaded in one of its slots. They want to use app number 4, the false flagger, which fakes an alarm or the location of a triggered alarm. Any response to a real alarm is delayed by 2 d6 minutes. To see if this works, Nur’s player rolls a d20 and adds their knowledge modifier. That’s nine plus three is twelve, which meets a normal difficulty rating of twelve to beat it. Success. An alarm blares on the opposite entrance to the building, which keeps the guards occupied for, rolling 2 d6 for it, eight minutes. Write it down somewhere that you successfully used an app. Each use adds plus one to the risk of fumbling when using apps until the next day, which I interpret to mean that not only a one but also a two fumbles if you’ve used an app once. If you’ve used apps two times, then a one, two, and three on the dice would all be fumbles.
App fumbles. Nur is jacked into the deck and has the app loaded in one of its slots. They want to use app number ten, CTech Attack. If this succeeds, the nearby corrupt corpos will lose a total of 4 d10 HP. Nur’s really excited for this. To see if this works, Nur’s player rolls a d20 and adds their knowledge modifier. That’s a one on the dice plus three knowledge modifier is four, oh no, which fails to meet a normal difficulty rating of twelve. But even worse, a one on the dice is a fumble. A fumble burns the app for the day and triggers a backlash. Let’s roll a d20 to see what backlash Nur gets. That’s a ten. Nur is ID’d by a hacker collective. They ask for d10 credits in 72 hours of they will post real or fabricated incriminating data of Nur and Nur’s friends for everyone to see.
Nano powers are strange powers that are rumored to be an infection of alien bacteria riding nanobots. If you are a host for this parasite, you are granted curious powers. These can vary and are listed on page 75. For example cosmic dust bots cover an area of up to twenty meters in diameter in dust and darkness for ten rounds. They taste like stained, rusted metal. Another example is remote control. A target within spitting range must obey a single command. You will forever hear their wordless voice faintly echo in your mind. Those are some example nano powers. To see if you succeed, roll a d20, add your presence modifier, and if it’s a twelve or higher, you activate the power. A failure hurts you for d2 damage. A fumble triggers the infestation linked to that power. Each nano adds plus one to the risk of fumbling when using nano powers until the next day, which I interpret to mean that not only a one but also a two fumbles if you’ve used it once. If you’ve used it two times, then a one, two, and three on the dice would all be fumbles.
Glitches are similar to Devil’s Luck in Pirate Borg. You begin with d2 glitches, so that’s either one or two of them. You class might give you a larger dice. After resting, if you used up all your glitches the previous day, you can roll your dice for more. You can spend a glitch to do one of five things. Either deal maximum damage with one attack, or reroll anyone’s dice roll, or lower the damage you are receiving by a d6, or neutralize a critical or a fumble, or, before rolling, reduce the difficulty rating of one test by four.
When you build a character in CY_BORG, you will either choose or randomly roll for a class, abilities, features, stuff, debt, glitches and hit points. I’ll build a character as an example. First I’ll roll for a name on the table on the first page of the book, so I have a word to call this character I’m building. The dice results are: first name Clock, last name Fu. Let’s follow the steps on page 38 for character creation. Clock Fu starts with two d6 times ten money credits on an anonymous credstick, which rolling for it is 60. They start with some cheap clothes and a retinal com device, which is a headset that augments reality. Every character in this game wears one and it lets you access the internet. Like everything, it can be hacked. We roll a d8, a d12, and another d12 to give Clock some starting gear. Clock has mirrorshades, a bio ID scanner that can track a person within fifty meters, and a fake ID.
Next, I’ll roll for a class, which will tell me instructions for gear, abilities, hit points, debt, and glitches. Rolling a six, that’s a forsaken gang goon class. Clock ran with the only gang to have their back and treat them like more than slum trash. They were Clocks’ family, and Clock bled, stole, and fought for them. They’re gone now, but Clock still has to keep their edge. Classes like the forsaken gang goon have a few ability numbers they start with, and then you roll 3d6 for the rest of their abilities. Because they’re small, which is a key word, it says here that Clock the forsaken gang goon starts with three d6 minus two strength so that’s eight minus two is six. Getting six on the roll means a score of -2 for strength, ouch. The forsaken gang goon doesn’t list any other impacts to the rest of the ability rolls, so let’s roll three d6 for each of them using the table on page forty. Agility is a nine across three d6, that roll translates to a +0 agility score. Knowledge is off, I rolled low, a three, a one, and a one, so that five roll becomes a -2 knowledge score. Presence is, rolling three d6 here, eight, so that’s a -1 presence ability score. Wow Clock’s stats are below average. We’ve got one more ability to roll, toughness, let’s roll three d6 dice here. The result is a two, a five, and a six for thirteen on the roll, which translates to a +1 for Clock’s toughness. Wow that was a bit rough, Clock’s not got the best stats. But hey, that’s a real example of rolling for a character’s abilities in CY_BORG.
Let’s continue with this goon class. Because of their stealth, all of Clock the forsaken gang goon’s presence and agility tests are two difficulty rating easier. Goons roll a d6 for their weapon, so that’s a one, a broken bottle that deals a d3 of damage. You can calculate a d3 by rolling a d6 and dividing the result in half. Goons also roll a d2 for armor, which is a two on the dice, for a styleguard on the table. This is tier one armor, which reduces incoming damage by a d2. It looks just like clothes. Clock starts with debt on page sixty one, so, rolling for it, that’s nine thousand credits owed to a small but extremely violent corporation, and they badly want their cash back. Rolling to find out what happened to their gang family, it looks like Clock’s friends were hauled off by the cops. When the cops came they found Clock there too, but thought they were just a punk kid. Loyal to each other, nobody in your gang ratted Clock out, and that’s why they’re still free. Let’s roll for Clock’s specialty using a d6 dice. That’s a six, which means Clock’s specialty is assaults. Clock always liked it old school; both hands raised running straight at the enemy. Whatever weapon you begin with, start with one for each hand. Nice, two broken bottles. You can use it to make a second attack each round at a difficulty rating of fourteen. That’s great. Lastly, gang goons have their toughness number of hit points plus a d6, and have d3 glitches. That’s one plus one is 2 hit points, wow that’s low, and, rolling a d3 which is a d6 divided by two, that’s two glitches.
Characters also get features, style, and obsession on pages 54 to 58. Let’s roll a d100 for a feature. Forty nine. Using the table on page 55, that’s an interesting perfume. I’ll do a quick search for perfumes on google to flesh this out a bit and hmm, it looks like oak is the first strange perfume to come up. Clock smells like an oak tree. Next let’s roll a d100 for style. Thirty six. That’s something called glitchmode. I’m imagining that instead of normal black eye outline makeup, Clock has a line of red on one side of the black, and a line of blue on the other side of the black, and it looks a bit like a glitch. That’s Clock’s style. Rolling a d20 for their wants, Clock wants a six, fame. Clock wants to be famous. Rolling a d20 for a quirk, that’s a ten, Clock always wears a hat or a hood and shades, always. Ooh, so the mirrorshades are back. Rolling for a current obsession on a d100, that’s a seventy, Clock is obsessed with slacklining, which I have to actually look up, one second. Oh that looks a lot like what I’d call tightrope walking, except the line is sagging instead of straight, and they don’t carry a balance pole. Ooh, that’s an interesting hobby. It’s nice that CY_BORG comes with all these randomization tables to flesh out your character. I doubt I could have come up with this slackline walking, hood and mirrorshade wearing, glitchmode styled, oak tree smelling character on my own, but now that the puzzle pieces are in front of me I’m already imagining how they go together. Neat. Thus ends character creation, and this how to play guide.
For players in the upcoming game session I will be GMing, you can double your starting money credits so you can afford to buy a few things. We’re at five percent of maximum power level at this time in the year, so that amount of money won’t be able to afford much. Don’t advance or level up at all. Simply follow the instructions for how to create a character, and then double your starting money credits, and spend it on whatever you can afford and want to buy.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing CY_BORG in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of CY_BORG in action. We encourage you to find the CY_BORG rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Oliver and Hefty must crack the case before the killer cracks any more heads in this mystery of forgotten memories. Fugue Tracing is a Pocket Gumshoe actual play podcast.
Oliver and Hefty must crack the case before the killer cracks any more heads in this mystery of forgotten memories. Fugue Tracing is a Pocket Gumshoe actual play podcast.
When new Firebreathing Kittens Gilda, Muriel, and Tracey come into a quantity of the drug known as Ash and are captured by the navy, hijinks ensue! Pirates and sirens abound as the trio sail the high seas in this Pirate Borg adventure!
When new Firebreathing Kittens Gilda, Muriel, and Tracey come into a quantity of the drug known as Ash and are captured by the navy, hijinks ensue! Pirates and sirens abound as the trio sail the high seas in this Pirate Borg adventure!
How to play Pirate Borg. Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Pirate Borg. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Pirate Borg game.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Game theme
- Attacking and defending
- Zero hit points
- Abilities
- Devil’s luck
- Ash
- Naval combat
- Sea shanties
- How to build a character
Pirate Borg is a pirate themed role playing game where you and your friends can pretend to be pirates in the dark Caribbean. Maybe you’re a British imperialist or a French courtesan. Or perhaps you’re a Spanish inquisitor, a merchant from the Yucatan, or a cultist worshiping the sunken one. Whoever you are, the discovery of ash, valuable intoxicating remnants of the undead after they’re destroyed, has forever changed the Caribbean markets as this fabled resource is astronomically expensive. Or will you use it yourself, and risk its mystical, addictive effects? Find where X marks the spot, in Pirate Borg. This game is a melee, ranged, and naval combat simulator where you the player will roll a twenty sided dice, or d20, to attack and defend against undead enemies who have shambled up out of the ocean depths. You can play as a swashbuckler, a voodoo ritualist, a buccaneer, a mermaid, a landlubber, a rapscallion, and more. There are mechanics for singing sea shanties, chugging grog to heal, brewing alchemical potions, testing the devil’s luck, and more.
Let’s talk about attacking and defending in Pirate Borg. Enemies don’t roll dice in combat. The players are the ones who roll to attack and defend. Players will be rolling a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and adding their ability modifier to their roll. For melee attacks, add the strength ability modifier. For ranged attacks, roll the presence ability modifier. Both are tested against a difficulty rating of 12. If you hit, which is if you got a twelve or higher, roll with the weapon’s damage dice to see how much damage you dealt the enemy.
The party also rolls for initiative. Initiative is a word that means the turn order, or who goes first and who goes second in a battle. A player rolls a d6 dice to represent everyone. If it’s a 1, 2, or a 3, the enemies go first. If it’s a 4, 5, or 6, the players go first. If you want to play using individual initiatives, players roll a d6 and add their agility modifier to it. For example, Hayden rolls a four on the dice and subtracts 1 agility modifier to get a three overall. Amaya rolls a two on the dice and adds zero agility modifier to get a two overall. Three is greater than two, so Hayden’s turn happens before Amaya’s in combat.
Let’s roll an example of melee attack with a cutlass. A chandelier is suspended from the ceiling above the corrupt governor’s ball and you want your character Hayden to cut that rope to cause some mayhem at a party you weren’t invited to. To see if Hayden hits, roll a d20 dice and add your strength modifier. That’s a 10 plus your 2 strength modifier, which meets the difficulty rating of 12. Hayden’s cutlass hits the rope. Now roll for the cutlass’s damage, which is a d6. Hayden dealt four damage to that rope, and the chandelier plunges to the party below.
Let’s roll an example of ranged attacking with a flintlock pistol. Your character Amaya sees a kraken’s tentacle rise from the sea and wants to shoot it before it reaches the ship. This weapon has a thirty foot range, nine rounds of remaining ammunition, and takes two actions to reload. To see if the bullet hits the tentacle, roll a d20 dice and add Amaya’s presence modifier. You rolled a 15, minus the negative one modifier, for a 14 overall. You beat the difficulty rating of 12 and hit the target. Now roll for the pistol’s damage, 2 d4 dice. Amaya dealt five damage to the kraken tentacle, and can attack eight more time before needing to spend two actions reloading.
Sometimes an enemy you’re attacking will be wearing armor. Tier three armor reduces incoming damage by a d6. Tier two armor reduces incoming damage by a d4. Tier one armor reduces incoming damage by a d2. For example, here’s what would happen if Hayden were swinging that cutlass against a skeleton pirate who was wearing a fancy British coat that has the stats of tier two armor. First Hayden’s player would roll a d20 and add Hayden’s strength modifier. That’s a sixteen plus two for eighteen total. Excellent, that meets or beats a twelve difficulty rating so the cutlass hits the skeleton pirate. Next roll for damage, which with a cutlass is a d6. The dice shows a four. Lastly, roll for armor to absorb some of that damage. The fancy British coat makes Hayden’s player roll a d4 for tier two armor, and Hayden rolls a three. The damage Hayden deals with the cutlass is reduced from four to one damage after armor.
Criticals when attacking. If you roll a twenty on your twenty sided dice when you are attacking, that is a critical success. Deal double damage, and then after that, reduce the armor or protection tier of your target by one tier. For example, if Hayden had critically attacked earlier, then after dealing double damage to the skeleton pirate, their tier two armor would have been reduced to tier one armor, only reducing future attacks by a d2 dice. The opposite of a critical success is a fumble. Rolling a one on your twenty sided dice means your weapon breaks or is lost.
When an enemy attacks you in Pirate Borg, you will roll to defend. For example if the ghost monkey that was sitting on the ghost ship captain’s shoulder runs up to you and claws or bites at a player, the player will roll a d20 and add their agility modifier, trying to get a 12 or higher. If they fail, the creature attacks them and hits. This ghostly monkey deals a d4 of damage when it claws or bites someone, which rolling that here is three damage.
Let’s talk about what happens when your character is wearing armor when defending. In the example above, the ghost monkey is about to deal a d4 of damage when it claws or bites you. If you had tier three armor you’d roll a d6 to reduce the incoming damage. Tier two armor lets you roll a d4 to reduce the incoming damage. Tier one armor lets you reduce incoming damage by a d2. If the monkey was going to deal three damage to you with their clawing biting attack, and you had tier one armor, you could roll a d2 and reduce the incoming damage by, rolling it to see what that number is, one damage. Your armor reduced the damage you took from three down to two.
Criticals when defending. If you roll a twenty on your twenty sided dice when you are defending, that is a critical success. You the player character can immediately make a free attack. For example if a ghost ship captain’s monkey was biting you and you rolled a 20 on your defense roll, you could immediately get in an attack against that monkey. The opposite of a critical success is a critical fumble. If you rolled a 1 on your d20 when rolling to defend, then you the player character take double damage, and then your armor is reduced by one tier. Armor can be repaired by spending silver coins, unless it is reduced below first tier, and then it’s ruined beyond repair.
Zero hit points. If you are reduced to zero hit points, you are air quotes “broken”. Roll on the broken table on page 32 to see what happens. One thing that might happen is instant death, with the option that the GM may allow your character to return to life as a haunted soul class. Another thing that might happen is hemorrhage, which means you will die in two hours unless treated. You also might get an injury or fall unconscious, etc. If you are reduced to negative hit points, then you skip the zero hit points table entirely and are simply dead. The rule book says, quote, “Down to Davy Jones’ locker with ye!”
Abilities are like character stats. There are five abilities in Pirate Borg: strength, agility, presence toughness, and spirit. Abilities can range between negative three and positive six. To see if your character is successful at something they try, roll a twenty sided dice and add your ability to the result, then compare the total to a difficulty rating, abbreviated DR. A DR of 6 is easy, a DR of 12 is normal, and a DR of 18 is nigh impossible.
Strength is used for melee fighting, lifting, grappling, and come about. If your character Polly tries to lift a cargo crate from the dock up to the ship, the game master would say the difficulty rating, for example 12, normal. You would roll a d20 and add their strength ability. For example, a roll of 10 plus a strength ability of plus two would equal twelve total. Polly can probably lift the crate, a normal thing most pirates can do. Strength, agility, presence, toughness, and spirit.
Agility is used for defending, balancing, swimming, fleeing, and full sail. If during a hurricane Polly was washed off the deck into the ocean, you would roll a d20 and add her agility modifier to swim. For example, a roll of 10 plus an agility ability of plus zero is ten. The hurricane has a nigh impossible DR of 18. Polly fails her swim check and starts to sink underwater. She can hold her breath for one plus her toughness ability’s number of minutes. Toughness is another one of the abilities. Because toughness ranges from negative three to positive six, a character can hold their breath for somewhere between hardly any time at all, just a minute before they choke on water, to potentially at most seven minutes.
Presence is used for smarts, perception, charm, shooting, and repair. If your character Polly is trying to charm the captain’s parrot to get it to snitch on what the captain said earlier behind closed doors, the game master would say the difficulty rating, 8. You would roll a d20 and add your presence modifier to see if you succeed. For example a roll of eleven minus three presence is eight, exactly meeting the difficulty rating to succeed. The parrot repeats the words it heard earlier.
Toughness is used for drinking grog, holding your breath, and surviving falling. If earlier today your character Polly got punched right in her gold tooth and she’s now looking to take the edge off, you would roll a d20 and add their toughness modifier. Looking at the roll, that’s thirteen on the dice plus one toughness modifier, for a fourteen overall. You would compare the result versus a difficulty rating of eight plus the number of drinks Polly has had in the last hour, which was two grogs. Fail, and you vomit for d2 rounds. But a fourteen meets or beats ten, so Polly succeeds. On a success, drinking grog heals you a d4 of hit points. Rolling for it, Polly heals one hit point. After drinking grog, your agility is at negative one for each drink you’ve had, and that lasts the number of hours per grog you drunk. For example Polly drank two drinks, so that’s two hours of negative two agility.
Spirit is used for willpower, using relics, and casting rituals. If your character can cast rituals as part of their class, then every day at dawn roll a d4 and add your spirit modifier to see how many rituals you can cast that day. Casting a ritual takes your full action. Name the ritual. Roll a d20 dice and add your spirit modifier. If the result is a twelve or higher, you successfully cast the ritual. Some example things you can do with rituals are enable people to breathe underwater, buff your allies, create an illusion, summon tentacles, return a recently deceased back to life, or make the weather obey your commands. Rituals always fail if your character is touching metal or carrying anything made of cold iron. If you fail at a ritual, you can’t use that specific one again all day, and you have to roll on the mystical mishaps table on page sixty six. Example mishaps are getting swarmed by birds, you get possessed by a spirit for d4 rounds, gravity behaves as if everything is underwater, etc.
Devil’s luck. When you build a character, your class will give you a dice to roll to determine how many devil’s luck points you have today. If you completely deplete your devil’s luck points, then after resting six hours, you can roll and gain more luck. Otherwise, the carryover number of luck carries over to the next day. This is incentive to use it all. You can spend devil’s luck in five ways. Four of the ways can be used on any target. The one thing that can only be done to yourself is: spend one devil’s luck to lower damage dealt to you by a d6 dice. These next four things can be spent on any target, yourself or someone else. They are: one: You can spend a devil’s luck to deal maximum damage with one attack. Two: you can spend one devil’s luck to reroll any dice. Three: you can spend one devil’s luck to lower one test’s difficulty rating by four. And lastly, you can spend one devil’s luck to neutralize a critical or fumble.
Ash is a neat lore unique to the world of Pirate Borg. It’s the remnants of destroyed undead. Ash has physiological and psychological effects when consumed. It’s extremely valuable. If your character consumes ash, roll a d20 to see what happens. Some of the effects that can happen when your character consume ash are: you might gain a permanent plus one to one of your abilities. You might have a permanent minus one to all abilities, that means strength, agility, presence, toughness, and spirit. You might gain the effects of tier three armor, reducing incoming damage by a d6. You might lose one of your limbs permanently. It is replaced by a ghost limb at sunset. You might see time slowed down around you and take two actions or attacks each round for 2 d6 minutes. You might begin to see everything that has ever lived glowing in neon colors. You might overdose on the ash and face a toughness roll against a difficulty rating of twelve or die instantly. It’s a random table, so, the only way to know what happens is to roll a dice. Ash addicts have sunken eye sockets, darkened lips, and faintly glowing bones.
Pirate Borg has a variety of ship stat blocks available, such as for rafts, canoes, longboats, piraguas, tartanes, sloops, frigates, ghost ships, etc. Ships have ten stats. Hit points, hull, agility, speed, skill, broadsides, small arms, ram, crew, and cargo. Hit points represents the vessel’s condition. Hull is like armor for ships. Agility is how maneuverable the ship is. Speed is the distance the ship can move each turn. Skill represents the crew’s training to operate the ship. Broadsides are cannons that deal damage to other ships. Small arms are swivel guns and muskets. The ram stat represents how much damage is dealt by ramming something with the ship. The crew stats are the minimum and maximum crew count the ship can carry without penalty. The last stat, cargo, is the amount of cargo the ship can carry.
How to do naval combat in Pirate Borg. Ships roll a d6 plus agility for initiative. The highest ship goes first, and player characters’ ships win ties. A ship does four things on its turn. First, the captain uses their action to move the ship. Second, non-captain player characters take one crew action each. Example crew actions are that you can fire broadsides, fire small arms, set the ship to full sail, come about, drop anchor, weigh anchor which pulls the anchor up, board another ship, ram something, use a relic or a ritual, hide, sing sea shanties, etc. Each action can only be chosen once per ship’s turn. Third, a ship that hasn’t taken at least two crew actions can take up to two crew actions total. Every ship gets at least two actions on its turn. Fourth, if the ships are anchored or really close to one another then stop taking crew actions and switch to close combat.
Here is an example. You and your two party members are pirates attacking a fellow pirate ship. You’re in a tartane, a small ship often used for rum running. These other pirates, in a pitiful dinghy, have been trying to edge their way into your rum running market, and you’ve taken offense to that. You spot them with their dinghy full of rum and start chasing them. You both roll initiative, which is a d20 plus the ship’s agility. The tartane has a plus two agility and the dinghy has a plus three, so it was close, but your sixteen beats their fifteen and you go first. Your captain moves your tartane five ocean distance units. You’re catching up fast on the dinghy, which can only move two. Second, non-captain player characters take one crew action each. Your fellow party member fires broadsides at the dinghy. They roll a d20 and add the ship’s crew skill plus their character’s presence of plus one against a difficulty rating of twelve. Twelve on the dice minus one crew skill for the tartane plus presence modifier of plus one equals a twelve, which meets to beat the difficulty rating. The firing of broadsides is effective, and the tartane’s d4 in broadsides deals two damage to the dinghy. The dinghy has no hull armor, so its hit points are reduced from four to two. It’s your turn. You choose to full sail. You roll a d20 and add the ship’s agility and your character’s ability and if you meet or beat a twelve, you can move one extra movement, quickly closing the distance between you and the dinghy. Your party intends to ram it next turn, but before that, you receive some small arms fire from them and take a d2 of damage to your ship’s hit points, but as a tartane your hull reduces incoming damage by d2 so the dinghy doesn’t do much. They shouldn’t have tried to rum run with a dinghy when a tartane was already on the job. That’s an example of a naval combat.
Sea shanties are a cool part of Pirate Borg. They’re on page 68. Every day, the crew of a ship can sing a number of sea shanties equal to one plus the captain’s spirit ability modifier. For example if the captain has a negative one in spirit, no sea shanties for you. If the captain has a plus two modifier to spirit, then the crew can sing three sea shanties a day. To sing a shanty, pick one that you know, sing it, and roll a d20 and add the crew skill, and compare the result against a difficulty rating of twelve. The crew skill is a number that depends on which ship you’re sailing. For example a sloop has a crew skill of negative one, a brigantine has a skill of plus zero, a frigate has a skill of plus one, and a galley has a skill of plus two. You roll a d20, add the ship’s crew skill, and if the result is twelve or higher, you succeed. Some example effects that sea shanties can have are: the song ‘blow the man down’ gives your ship a plus two difficulty rating to hit until the end of combat. The song ‘a drop of Nelson’s blood’ increases the ship’s speed by 1 for d8 hours. The song ‘fish in the sea’ lets you choose a direction. The wind blows that way for d4 hours. I genuinely looked up all of these sea shanties and have been listening to them and quite enjoying it. I encourage my players to all learn at least one sea shanty you can sing during the adventure.
I will now build an example Pirate Borg character: someone like Mary Readington or Francis Dragon. Character creation involves rolling a dice and seeing what character aspect we got from a random table, so for my Firebreathing Kittens players, you’re of course always welcome to look at a traits table and pick the trait that most matches the character you’re imagining in your mind. Or if, like for Mary or Francis here, we’re not sure what sorts of character they are, you can roll on the random table and see what happens. We will roll for the items they carry, the ability points they have, their class details, and their distinctive personality traits. Let’s get started.
Let’s create a random character, for example Mary Readington. Step one to creating a character is to roll a d6 to see what kind of container they’re carrying they’re stuff in and what they’ve got in it. Rolling a d6, Mary’s using a bucket to carry up to four normal sized items. Rolling a d12 to determine her cheap gear, she has inside that bucket, a… medical kit. Oh that’s useful, she can stop bleeding or poison or infection, and heal a d6 of HP. It has her presence number plus four uses. Rolling a d12 for her fancy gear, she’s got a worn out book.
Step two in character creation is to roll your ability scores. Let’s roll three d6 for each ability. Strength is 11, so using the table, that’s a +0 modifier. Agility is 12, so that’s also a +0 modifier. Presence is 8, so that’s a -1 modifier. Toughness is 16, so that’s a +2 modifier. Rolling three d6 for spirit, I got 12 so that’s another +0 modifier.
Step three in character creation is to roll for a class. Let’s play with all the optional classes, so we’ll roll a d8 dice. The dice says five, so that’s a zealot. This class can cast arcane rituals and use ancient relics as long as they’re wearing tier 2, medium armor or lower. Zealots get +2 to spirit, -1 to agility, and -1 to toughness, so Mary’s new ability numbers are +0 strength, -1 agility, -1 presence, +1 toughness, and +2 spirit. The zealot class has a d8 + toughness number of hit points, so rolling a d8, that’s six plus one is seven hit points for Mary the zealot. Zealots begin with a d4 of devil’s luck, so rolling, that’s one devil’s luck her first day of playing. Next roll a d8 for which weapon on page fifty to start with, so rolling a five that means Mary’s weapon is a boarding axe which deals a d6 of damage. Zealots also get a d8 of clothes on page 52, so with a three she’s wearing common clothes and no hat. Zealots get to learn a prayer, so we roll a d10 and find out that Mary learned the Commune prayer. She can test her spirit against a difficulty rating of 8. If she passes, she can, quote, “Asketh thy deity a singular yay or nay query.”, so that’s cool. She can use prayers d2 + spirit times a day, rolling when dawn breaks. It consumes an action to pray, but doesn’t require a roll or test unless the specific prayer says it does. Lastly for the zealot class, let’s see who Mary Readington is praying to. We roll a d8 and it’s: five, the deep. That makes sense for a pirate to be praying to, honestly. All righty, class creation is now complete.
Step four in character creation is to roll for the tables on pages 55 to 61. These are your personality quirks. Rolling a d100, Mary’s background is a warrior, she has sixty silver and a cultural weapon. I’m not entirely sure what a cultural weapon means, so let’s make her boarding axe specifically a doloire, a type of axe I generated using a list of axes online because I personally am not an axe expert, but it appears to be an axe from the middle ages that was decorated with punched and incised abstract floral patterns. Rolling a d20 for her distinctive flaw, she is way too loud. Rolling another d20 for her physical trademark, she has matted, dreaded hair. Rolling a d20 for her idiosyncrasies she’s afraid of prime numbers larger than three. Any d20 roll of 5, 7, 11, 13, and 17 fill her with superstitious terror. Rolling a d20 for her unfortunate incidents and conditions, she’s haunted by a silent ghost that is always there but only she can see it. And lastly for the random table rolling, Mary is carrying around a shard of crystal, which is important to her.
To summarize the character we built, Mary Readington is a zealot class with +0 strength, -1 agility, -1 presence, +1 toughness, and +2 spirit. She has seven hit points and one devil’s luck her first day and a d4 each morning after that. She’s carrying a medical kit with three uses and a worn out book in her bucket. She’s also got a doloire boarding axe and a shard of crystal that’s important to her. She’s wearing common clothes and has matted, dreaded hair. If you say the numbers 5, 7, 11, 13, or 17 around her, she’ll way too loudly shush you out of superstition. She’s too loud in general, except when she’s whispering to the silent ghost that only she can see. Voila, we have created the character of Mary Readington.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Pirate Borg in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Pirate Borg in action. We encourage you to find the Pirate Borg rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Eighty years in the future, Addam, Henry, and Professor Pimento reminisce on their glory days; pulling cards, trading stories, and waiting for the end. Of All Things is an actual play podcast of Here, At The End.
Eighty years in the future, Addam, Henry, and Professor Pimento reminisce on their glory days; pulling cards, trading stories, and waiting for the end. Of All Things is an actual play podcast of Here, At The End.
Marty Sadie and Maeve team up with the other spirits of the seasons to put a stop to Ivy's plan to engulf the world with her toxic jungle. In the process, they learn to accept themselves and see their true value. Tis The Seasons is an actual play podcast of Action 12 Cinema.
Marty Sadie and Maeve team up with the other spirits of the seasons to put a stop to Ivy's plan to engulf the world with her toxic jungle. In the process, they learn to accept themselves and see their true value. Tis The Seasons is an actual play podcast of Action 12 Cinema.
Nugh, Bill, and Sadie try to save the town of Hardingwood using the mechanics from the official Alien movie franchise's roleplaying game.
Nugh, Bill, and Sadie try to save the town of Hardingwood using the mechanics from the official Alien movie franchise's roleplaying game.
This Week we join Armando, Sadie, and Yarnak as they play Dicing with Death. We start at the end as this group Grapples with being dead and try to find a way back.
This Week we join Armando, Sadie, and Yarnak as they play Dicing with Death. We start at the end as this group Grapples with being dead and try to find a way back.
Welcome to a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. This is our rules discussion where we discuss the rules we played in the past dozen games, for Fall 2024. We’ll discuss the ttrpgs 24 Hour Crime Scene, Dicing With Death, Honey Heist, Twisted Wishes, CBR+PNK, Darksome Delve, Lost Roads of Lociam, Exuviae, Sexy Battle Wizards, Roll For Shoes, and LURPS. Let’s dive right in, reading these reviews written by our Firebreathing Kittens players and GMs.
Rusty, Leo and Tord rush to the docks of Niqamui when fireworks declare an annual contest. After sign up the group is whisked away and dropped into a winner-takes-all battle to the finish! They encounter many familiar faces as they mow through the competition only to have to face their most deadly threat yet!
Rusty, Leo and Tord rush to the docks of Niqamui when fireworks declare an annual contest. After sign up the group is whisked away and dropped into a winner-takes-all battle to the finish! They encounter many familiar faces as they mow through the competition only to have to face their most deadly threat yet!
How to play LURPS
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for LURPS, Lewis’ Unified Roleplaying System. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own LURPS game.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Classless point-buy d6 game
- Target numbers
- Critical successes and failures
- How to use a skill
- How to attack
- Armor
- Distances
- How to cast magic
- Flaws
- How to build a character
LURPS is a classless point buy system that uses only normal six sided dice. Classless means any character can learn any skill. Contrast that with a game where only rogues can learn how to pickpocket, or only clerics can learn how to heal, or only fighters can wield swords. Any LURPS character can wield any weapon and learn any skill. Point buy means you spend character points to buy and learn new weapons and skills. The more points you spend, the better you are at that activity. And lastly, LURPS uses only six sided dice, which I will also call d6 going forward.
You will determine your success or failure in LURPS by rolling six sided dice and counting how many of them meet or beat the difficulty. The standard difficulty check, also called a DC, is four. For a DC of 4, each dice you roll that lands on a one, a two, or a three, is a failure. Each dice that lands on a four, a five, or a six, is a success. Every weapon, spell, and skill that you use will have a target number. The target is how many individually passing dice you need to overall succeed at the thing you’re trying to do. For example if your target number is two, then you need at least two of the dice you roll to be a four or higher. The more dice you roll, the more likely you are to hit your target number. If you only rolled one dice, it would be impossible to achieve a target of two. If you were rolling two dice, then it’s possible for both of them to be a four or higher, and for you to be successful, but the odds aren’t great. The higher the target number is, the more dice you need to roll. The probability math is pretty straightforward because each dice you roll has a 50/50 chance to hit a 1, 2, or 3, compared to a 4, 5, or 6. So for each one target number, you’ll want to roll two dice, in general. Of course, the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to hit your target number. It’s reasonable to expect to hit a target number of two rolling four dice. It’s even more likely if you roll six dice. There are some in-game ways to change the difficulty number, for example lock picking tools make the lock picking DC 3 instead of 4.
Rolling a six or a one on the dice are special occurrences. Ones are special because they cannot be rerolled. When you roll a six, you can choose to reroll a failed dice. If you reroll a four and it becomes a six, that’s another chance to re roll one of your other dice. It can get very exciting. The more sixes you have, the better because if you roll more sixes than the target number, that is a critical success. A critical success in combat means you deal full damage. Here is an example. Your target number is two. You are rolling four dice. You roll a one, a two, a three, and a six. The one is a bit of a bummer, it cannot be rerolled. The two and the three are failures, but with your six, you can reroll one of them. So you choose to reroll the three. The dice with a three on it, when rolled again, becomes a six! That’s awesome. Now you have two successes, you meet your target number of two, and you’re going to succeed. You currently have the same number of sixes as your target number, and one reroll left. There’s a chance that you will roll a critical success. That second six entitled you to rerolling one more failed dice. You reroll that dice that had a two on it. It’s also a six, oh my goodness! Now, with three sixes, you have more sixes than your target number of two, so you critically succeed on your hit and deal full damage. Every damage dice your weapon deals is a six of damage. Yaaay. Do always keep in mind: if half of any dice pool you roll are ones, that is a critical failure.
How to use a skill. There are thirty skills in the base free LURPS rule book. You can put character points into a skill to first initially gain access to the skill, and then to level it up. The maximum skill level is seven. To use a skill, roll as many dice as your level. That means the most dice you can roll for a skill is seven dice. Here is an example of rolling your skill level number of dice. If your skill in identifying spells and arcane items is four, then you would roll four dice. If your skill in sailing and vehicles is three, then you’d roll three dice. Each skill has a table that tells you how to interpret how many successes you got, ranging from one to four successes. Here is an example of consulting your skill table. You have five ranks in the barter and appraise skill, so you roll five d6 dice. If you get one success, the skill table says you get about a five percent discount. If two of your dice are successes, you get a ten percent discount and you would know the value of an item to within about twenty five percent of its actual price. If you roll three successful dice, you get a fifteen percent discount in the shop, and you know how rare an item is in this region. If you get four successful dice, you get a twenty percent discount, and you can persuade the merchant to deal with illegal goods. Each skill has its own interpretation table. When you put a point in a skill, add the skill’s table to your character sheet so you don’t have to dig through the rule book later.
How to attack. There are six combat skills in LURPS that you can put skill points in just like any other skill. These are: slashing weapons, crushing weapons, piercing weapons, unarmed grappling, bows, and gunpowder. Like all the other skills, the maximum level for combat skills is also seven, meaning you can roll seven dice. There are tables of weapons starting on page 42. The table tells you the name of the weapon, the skill used to use the weapon, the weight of the weapon, how many hands it takes to use the weapon, how much damage the weapon deals, and a description of the weapon. The weight of the weapon determines its properties, so look at page 40 to understand your weapon. Light weapons need two successes in order to hit, and deal 1 d6 of damage. Medium weapons need three successful dice in order to hit, and deal 2 d6 of damage. Heavy weapons need four successful dice in order to hit, and deal 3 d6 of damage.
Here’s an example weapon attack. You have a dagger and five levels in the piercing skill. You stab your dagger at an enemy. Roll five dice because that’s your piercing skill’s number of dice. Because the dagger is light weight, you only need two successes. You roll a one, a two, a three, a four, and a five. The four and five are successes, so you hit your target number of two, and the dagger embeds into your enemy. Roll one d6 of damage. Great job.
Armor can protect you from physical damage types in LURPS. Armor has three stat numbers or letters separated by forward slashes. The first number is how much coverage the armor gives you, which can range between one and ten. Coverage is how many dice you roll. The second number is the difficulty check, which is the pass or fail number for each dice. The third stat is a letter and represents the type of armor, like it protects you from piercing damage would be a P. Here’s an example armor roll. You have two points of cover from your mythrul plate armor, with DC three, and it protects you from piercing damage. The enemy is attacking you for six slashing damage with their axe. Roll your coverage number of dice, which is two dice. Every dice that gets a three or higher will meet to beat the DC of three, reducing the incoming damage by one for each success. If that was piercing, each of your armor dice would be an automatic success.
Distances. There are five distances in LURPS: immediate, short, medium, long, and very far. Immediate means close enough to punch. Short distance is about how big a bedroom is. Medium distance is still close enough to hit with an arrow. Long means a few city blocks. Lastly there’s very far, which is like from here to that mountain on the horizon.
How to use magic. You can put your skill points in a specific school of magic if you want, just like a skill. There are ten schools of magic. Putting a single skill point into the school gains you access to the full list of spells in that school of magic, and you can cast the spells from that school. By the way, the maximum number of skill points you can have in any skill or school of magic is seven. Here is how you would cast a spell. First, declare the name of the spell and the level you’re casting it at. Then, spend the amount of mana needed to cast that level of a spell. Page 56 has a table that you will want to put on your character sheet if you’re a magic caster that tells you how much mana gets spent at each level. Next, roll the number of dice you have in the school of magic’s skill. The spell’s target number is the level you cast it at. If you have as many successful dice as your target number, the spell was cast successfully.
Here is an example of casting a spell. Your character has six skill dice in the school of healing and abjuration. You declare that you are casting the spell called Heal at third level. The table on page 56 says third level spells cost six mana, so you spend six mana, going down from 45 to 39 mana. You roll a one, a two, a three, a four, a five, and a six. The target number is the spell’s level. That’s a three here because you rolled a third level spell. The four, five and six all meet a standard difficulty DC of four. That’s three successful dice, meeting your target number of three. Excellent, you cast the spell. The person you’re casting heal on recovers three d6 of damage, so you roll three d6 and get a nine, so they recover nine hit points.
Let’s talk about miscasting in LURPS. Miscasting is when you roll the number of dice that you have in the skill and not only do you not get at least as many successful dice as the level of the spell, but also, half or more of your dice pool consisted of ones. Is half rounded down, like one out of three dice, or rounded up, like two out of three dice? I wasn’t sure from reading the rule book, so for this explanation I’m going with the more exciting answer of rounding down, one out of three dice is half. For example let’s say you have six skill dice in the school of healing and abjuration. You declare that you’re casting a level four heal spell. The target number is the spell’s level, four. Oops, you rolled a one, a one, a three, a four, a five, and a six. The four, five and six all succeed. Hopefully that six, which lets you reroll any failed dice that wasn’t a one, gets you a fourth success. You reroll the three, but get another one. Uh oh, you didn’t meet the spell’s target number. And even worse, three of your six dice are ones, so you critically fail and miscast. Consult the miscast table on page 79 to see what happens to you. If you’re a magic user, I suggest putting this miscast table on your character sheet so you don’t have to dig through the rule book mid session. So let’s consult this table. The difference between the number of successes and your target was one dice, so that’s a level one miscast. If it had been two dice, that would have been a level two miscast. There are six possible outcomes for each miscast level. Roll a d6 and see what happens instead of you casting your spell. Miscast outcomes range from minor, like the spell hitting a different target of your choice, to concerning, such as collapsing asleep for one hour per spell level which can totally take you out of a fight, to downright lethal, such as taking five times the mana cost of the spell as lethal force damage. A level five miscast might even instantly slay your character and replace them with a greater demon who has 250 hit points and a good chance of killing your entire party. It’s very unlikely that this will happen, but if it does, it’s quite the story.
Resisting magic. You can cast lots of different types of magic in LURPS. You can blow thick smoke to obscure vision, you can firmly slap a piece of iron, steel, cobalt, or nickel to magnetize it, you can spray a geyser of flammable slippery oil. Not every spell prompts a resistance roll from its target. But if there is one, it means the person you’re trying to hex gets to roll a single dice in their own defense. There is a table on page 56 that has a column labeled resist. Or you can remember that the resistance number is one higher than the spell level number. Or you can use the table. For example, at level three, the target rolling to resist succeeds if they roll a 4. This means that any four, five or six on their single resistance dice will succeed. If they resist successfully, the spell will clarify what happens to them. For example they don’t go blind or don’t become stunned or don’t fall asleep. When a trap calls for you to resist it, it’s the same thing, a single dice will determine if you resisted or not.
Magic damage. There’s a sentence in this LURPS rule book that I will read for you. Quote, “Only Air & Lightning, Fire & Light and Necromancy & Enchantment spell schools deal magic damage.” End quote. Those are the only three schools that can deal magic damage. The other schools of magic have other effects, and lots of them. But let’s spend this moment talking about those three schools, the magic damage ones. When you buy even one skill point in a magic school, you have full access to its entire spell list. It’s your choice what level you choose to cast each spell at. Casting a spell at higher level deals more damage. There’s a table on page 56 that you’ll be wanting to put on your character sheet if you use one of those three schools of magic. The table has the spell level, the mana cost, the damage dealt, and the resist difficulty. Here is an example of casting a spell from one of the three magic damage schools. Your character has five dice in the skill for the school of fire and light magic. You have access to fully all of the spells on that spell list, and can choose which level to cast them at. The target number of successes you need to roll to cast it, is equal to the spell’s level. To cast a level three spell, you would roll your five skill dice and hope that at least three of them are a 4, a 5, or a 6. If not, it’s a failure. If half of your dice pool consists of ones, that’s a critical failure, which when rolling to cast a spell means a miscast. But let’s say you succeed. You rolled your five dice and three of the dice show a four or higher, meeting your target number. The table shows that casting a level three spell from the fire and light school of magic will cost you six mana and will deal 3 d6 of damage. You can roll three d6 dice now and that’s how much damage the target is about to take. That’s a lot of damage, by the way.
Flaws. Flaws are fun roleplaying opportunities. You can invoke a flaw during game play to gain inspiration. Describe how your flaw makes the situation worse in a real way, not just a convenient way, to gain an inspiration. Later, spend your inspiration to turn any check into a DC 2, meaning the number you have to roll on the dice to succeed is a two instead of the standard four. Only rolling a one fails when you have inspiration. Here is an example: Your flaw is that you are a clean freak. Instead of getting ready for your friend to come over your house being a difficulty of four, for you, the clean freak, you spend two extra hours cleaning everything. This impacts the story because it means you didn’t spend those two hours doing your homework, and now you’ll have to face the consequences of that not being done. Your game master awards you an inspiration, which you can spend later to make any roll a difficulty check of two instead of the standard four. The only dice roll that will fail on a DC of two is if you roll a one. Later, you’re in class and you got a zero on your homework because you quickly scribbled nonsense on it. The teacher snarks at you in front of everyone. After class, you make a skill check, a diplomacy and persuasion skill roll, on your crush, asking them to tutor you in the library later to help you raise your grade. Your diplomacy and persuasion skill is not high, only a three. A three in the diplomacy and persuasion skill means you only have three dice to roll. Normally with a standard difficulty check of four, meaning only fours on the dice succeed, it’s risky to hope to hit the target number of two you’d need to persuade this absolute stranger who you think is cute to spend their valuable time tutoring you. Are you cute enough yourself? The skill is how you find out. You spend your inspiration, changing that DC from 4 to 2, and as a result all three of your diplomacy dice succeed. You hit that target number of two, and you two cute people review the course material together and learn a bit more about each other. That’s nice. To summarize this example, invoking a flaw has to have a real consequence on the story, genuinely creating trouble for yourself. If you do really make life harder for yourself, your game master might grant you inspiration, which can be spent later on a future roll to make sure you succeed when it really matters to you.
Building a LURPS character uses its classless point buy system. Any character can use points to buy any skill. You’re not locked out of pick pocketing abilities because you’re a priest, or locked out of axe wielding abilities because you’re a slender elf. Buy what you want. You can spend your character points on stats, skills, or feats. The rulebook suggests spending one third of your character points on stats and the other two thirds on skills. Every one character point can be spent to gain either five stat points or one skill point. You are technically allowed to spend two character points to buy a feat, but it’s recommended that you do this alternative. The alternative is that you can gain two flaws to gain one feat. A character can have a maximum of four flaws and two feats gained this way, and you should, because flaws are fun roleplaying opportunities.
Stats. There are three stats. You can spend a character point to get five stat points. The first stat is hit points, abbreviated HTP. If you spend a character point, you get five hit points. If your hit points reach zero during combat, your character falls unconscious. If your HTP reaches negative half of the maximum, your character dies. For example: your character has twenty HTP. If you reach zero, you fall unconscious. If you reach negative ten, you would die. Pretty simple. The second stat is magical power, or mana, abbreviated MAN. If you spend a character point, you get five mana. You spend mana to cast spells. When mana reaches zero, you’re out of magical power and can’t cast any more spells. The more mana you have, the more spells you can cast before you get tired. Mana refreshes when your character sleeps for a full night’s rest. The third and last stat is speed, or special. It’s abbreviated SPE. If you spend a character point, you get five SPE. You can spend SPE to swing an extra attack on you turn, or to make sure you succeed by rolling extra dice, or to move further by gaining extra movement. There’s a table on how many SPE you spend to get an extra attack, extra dice, or extra movement on page 7, and honestly you’re gonna need a copy of that table in front of you to play LURPS. I recommend putting that SPE table from page 7 on your character sheet, so you know how much to spend, and what you can get.
Freebies. There are some character points that all player and nonplayer characters start with. Everyone starts with two character points in hit points, mana, and special. One character point becomes five stat points. That means everyone starts with 10 HTP, 10 MAN, and 10 SPE. Everyone also starts at rank two in two free skills: Unarmed, and an additional combat skill of your choice. That means whenever you make an unarmed attack, you roll two dice. These freebie starting character points aren’t subtracted from your total character points. It’s similar to starting at level one in another game.
Spending character points to gain skills when building your character can be simple or realistic. You have have a maximum of seven ranks in a skill. That means you can roll a maximum of seven dice. In the simple skill leveling system, improving from rank 1 to rank 2 costs one character point, and improving from rank 2 to rank 3 still costs one character point, every level increase costs one character point all the way up. In the realistic skill leveling system, it costs more character points to level up a rank six skill into a max rank seven skill. The realistic skill level up option is there for people who enjoy how in video games it’s easy to level up in the beginning, but then the level ups need more and more experience, and it takes quite a lot of experience points to reach max level. Both systems exist and the game master can pick the skill level up system they like best.
The players in my upcoming game will all be at maximum power level. For LURPS, I estimate that you can achieve maximum strength if you build a character using 60 character points. That’s probably max. It’s certainly very powerful. Use the simple skill cost guide. That means you spend one character point to increase a skill by one level, regardless of if that’s going from 1 to 2 skill dice, or going from 6 to 7 skill dice. Since we’re playing a oneshot and your character doesn’t have money, you can spend character points one for one for armor coverage points, equipment, and upgrading weapons materials.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing LURPS in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of LURPS in action. We encourage you to find the LURPS rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
A familiar face brings troubling news. The veil between what is real and what isn't risks being torn asunder! Join Nugh, Anne, and Armando as they "do anything" to prevent calamity. Nod Again is an actual play podcast of Roll For Shoes.
A familiar face brings troubling news. The veil between what is real and what isn't risks being torn asunder! Join Nugh, Anne, and Armando as they "do anything" to prevent calamity. Nod Again is an actual play podcast of Roll For Shoes.
In this not safe for work adults-only adventure, Chian and Sadie play the tabletop roleplaying game Sexy Battle Wizards. Intended for mature audiences only.
In this not safe for work adults-only adventure, Chian and Sadie play the tabletop roleplaying game Sexy Battle Wizards. Intended for mature audiences only.
Fight Of The Bumblebee is an actual play podcast using the Exuviae mechanics. Join Bill, Sadie, and Nugh as they investigate a Bee murder in Hardingwood. What will they uncover?
Fight Of The Bumblebee is an actual play podcast using the Exuviae mechanics. Join Bill, Sadie, and Nugh as they investigate a Bee murder in Hardingwood. What will they uncover?
Nothing a good beer can't fix? Join Ailbh and Ivy on another quest as they search for Todd and a replacement for the addictive LifeBru. Using mechanics from Lost Roads of Lociam, the Firebreathing Kittens survive quite a scare as they cross the Fubi Plains.
Nothing a good beer can't fix? Join Ailbh and Ivy on another quest as they search for Todd and a replacement for the addictive LifeBru. Using mechanics from Lost Roads of Lociam, the Firebreathing Kittens survive quite a scare as they cross the Fubi Plains.
How to play Lost Roads of Lociam
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Lost Roads of Lociam. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play Lost Roads of Lociam yourselves.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Every roll is a d100
- In opposed contests the greatest difference wins
- Ten traits
- Gain 1 experience per trait if succeed with that trait during the session
- Professions
- Weapon and armor proficiencies increase your martial trait
- Items
- Exertion reduces trait by 10 to roll a guaranteed 2
- Status effects reduce traits
- Ranged combat
Lost Roads of Lociam is a d100 based tabletop roleplaying game system. Roll dice to randomly generate a number between 1 and 100. A 100 is a botch resulting in personal injury. A natural 1 is a success the rule book calls almost divine in its flawless execution. For any other number between 1 and 100, subtract the roll from the trait. You succeed if the difference is equal to or greater than the task difficulty secretly set by the Game Master before you rolled. Tell your result to your Game Master so they can consult a difficulty table and tell you if you succeed or fail.
For example, your trait is 80. You roll a 20. You tell your Game Master that your trait minus your roll equals 60. The Game Master looks at the table and sees that a 60 succeeds at a "hard" task, which needed a 50 or more. But a 60 fails at an "impossible" task, which needed a 75 or more. The Game Master tells you if you succeed or fail, depending on how difficult the task was set before you rolled.
When you are opposing someone else, for example in combat or arm wrestling or horse racing or sneaking, you both roll dice and compare to see who has the greater difference between their trait and roll. Both people roll a number between 1 and 100, and subtract it from their trait. The person with the greatest difference wins. If both people have a negative difference, neither person was skilled enough to do anything.
For example, person A and person B are in a sword fight. Person A has a martial trait of 60 and rolled 10. Person A's difference is 50. Person B has a martial trait of 70 and rolled higher than their trait, rolling an 80. Person B's difference is -10. Because 50 is larger than -10, person A wins the contest and deals a sword wound of an effect size based on the two peoples' martial trait number to person B, consult the table on page 47. If person A and person B had tied, then the one with the highest trait number would have won. If both person A and person B had gotten a negative difference, neither would have been skilled enough to injure anyone.
There is a table on page 47 showing how much damage people are left with after a combat. A combat might leave your character pained (-20 to rolls), hurt(-30 to rolls), injured(-40 to rolls), or maimed(-50 to rolls). How quickly you can recover from injuries depends on your martial trait number. For example, a character with 40 martial would recover from being pained in a half hour. A character with 90 martial would recover from being pained in five minutes. The recovery table is on page 52.
There are ten traits that every character in Lost Roads of Lociam will have a number in that ranges from 0 to 100. These traits are: Academic, Athletic, Communication, Faith, Forester, Knowledge, Magic, Martial, Perception, Street-smarts. You can use your character's traits to do things. Each trait chapter contains tables of modifiers you can apply to various activities you might attempt using that trait. These include:
- Academic: literacy, mathematics, access to reference books, access to geographical maps, ability to recognize heraldry flags, book learning of history, law, customs, and etiquette.
- Athletics: climbing, falling, guard duty, long distance travel, poison resistance, disease, weather exposure, starvation, dehydration, riding a horse, running long distance, and athletics can also be used for sneaking.
- Communication: communicating in a foreign language, charming, bluffing, and intimidating.
- Faith: praying for advice, praying for creation, praying for destruction, praying for influence, asking for divine favor, or asking for a blessing which adds between 5 and 20 to the next roll. A person can only be the recipient of a single blessing at a time.
- Forester: familiarity with a place, camouflage, stealth, trapping animals and enemies, wilderness survival, tracking and concealing tracks.
- Knowledge: common sense, regional knowledge, historical knowledge, and becoming insane.
- Magic: your odds of success when casting spells, and your ability to sense magic which is called Fathom. To see if you cast a spell successfully, subtract your roll from your magic trait and consult that school of magic's table to see what number is needed to succeed with that spell. If your attempt to use magic fails, you can try again but subtract five from your result for each time you've failed at that spell this session. If you get a natural 100 or 1, consult the botch and critical success table on pages 59 and 60.
- Martial: weapon skills, melee combat, ranged combat, and healing time after a battle. Weapons and armor you equip will modify your martial trait. The cap on positive modifications gained from gear is half your martial trait. There is also a second cap on positive modifications gained from weapon proficiencies, again maxing out at half your martial trait.
- Perception: searching, alertness, becoming afraid, and overcoming fear.
- Street-smarts: familiarity with the local area, disguise, impersonation, escaping from ropes or shackles, selling stolen items, forgery, lock picking, pick pocketing, stalking a mark, and stealth.
You gain one experience point for a trait by succeeding with that trait on a roll during a moment of important consequence or danger. Only one point can be gained per trait per adventure. At the end of the session, pool all these experience points together. You can spend experience points to level up your traits. Consult the tables in the rulebook to see how many experience points you need to spend. It depends on which trait, the trait's current level, and the level the trait would become.
For example, the athletics and perception traits cost less experience points to improve than the faith and magic traits do. They have different tables in the rule book for leveling them up.
Leveling up low number traits costs less experience than leveling up high level traits. Improving a trait from a lower level like 20 to a middling level like 50 costs fewer experience points than improving the trait from a middling number to approach a trait of 100.
Here is an example of how to read the experience table on page 21. Let's say you currently have a 0 in your forester trait. It would cost 2 experience points to increase your forester from 0 to 5, and 4 experience points to increase your forester from 0 to 10.
Here is an example of how to read the experience table on page 20. Let's say you currently have a 50 in your athletics trait. It would cost 4 experience points to increase your athletics from 50 to 55, and 8 experience points to increase your athletics from 50 to 60.
Here is an example of how to read the experience table on page 22. Let's say you currently have an 80 in your magic trait. It would cost 32 experience points to increase your magic trait from 80 to 85, and 128 experience points to increase your magic from 80 to 100.
Please note that page 87 has a table meant to be used when leveling up faith. Those who follow commandments faithfully during the session will find it easier to level up their faith trait. You can appeal for your roleplaying during the session when you did something to adhere to the tenets of your faith to be applied as a modifier to decrease or increase the experience points needed to level up your faith.
When building a character, see if your specific character would fit with a profession listed on pages 60 to 62. If any of those professions match your backstory, you can choose to spend 20 experience points if your magic trait is below 55, or 15 experience points if your magic trait is 55 to 75, or 10 experience points if your magic trait is above 75, to learn all lower magic abilities listed for your profession.
Weapon and armor proficiencies cost 10 experience points for a first level proficiency, 15 additional experience points for a second level proficiency, and 20 additional points for a maximum third level proficiency.
One level of weapon proficiency increases your weapon modifier by 1.5x. Two levels of weapon proficiency increases your weapon modifier by 2x. The maximum three levels of weapon proficiency increases your weapon modifier by 2.5x.
For example, your character with a martial trait of 40 has two points of proficiency in military weapons. They have a sword which gives a +5 bonus to their martial trait. Because of their two levels of proficiency in military weapons, this bonus is doubled from 5 to 10. Neither modification nor proficiency bonuses exceed half of their martial trait of 40 which would be 20, so you're all good. You can roll as if your martial trait was 50 instead of 40. Forty from your base martial trait, five from your sword, and five from your proficiency, for fifty total in your martial trait after weapons and proficiencies.
When you buy an item in Lost Roads of Lociam, the cheaper price on the left of the slash is to buy it used, which has a minus five modifier to its roll when you use the item. The expensive price on the right of the slash is to buy the item brand new, which gives a plus five roll modifier and lets you use the item.
Exertion reduces your trait number by 10 to count your d100 roll as being a 2. Lower rolls are better, so the two is like a guaranteed success.
Status effects such as over burdened, maimed, and terrified decrease your trait by an amount ranging from 5 to 50.
During ranged combat, only combatants with a ranged weapon can apply their weapon's bonus to their martial trait. Armor benefits are half against ranged weapons. A melee combatant winning a contest against a ranged combatant just means they didn't take ranged damage, they can't deal damage to a ranged combatant unless in melee distance.
For players in my upcoming game, you all will be at 70% of maximum power. For Lost Roads Of Lociam, I estimate that you can achieve that if you build a character using eight hundred experience points. I also estimate that owning ten items, which includes all equipment, weapons, armor, knickknacks, consumables, etc, should be appropriate for this level.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Lost Roads of Lociam in oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to see an example of Lost Roads of Lociam actually being played. We encourage you to find the Lost Roads of Lociam rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Hospital visiting hours, accusations, ledgers recording foul deeds, storm clouds, missing cows, church sermons, and carriages. Core Delvelopment is a Darksome Delve actual play podcast.
Hospital visiting hours, accusations, ledgers recording foul deeds, storm clouds, missing cows, church sermons, and carriages. Core Delvelopment is a Darksome Delve actual play podcast.
Wrestling with Cases is an actual play episode of CBR+PNK. Bill, Nugh, and Rusty are hired to steal a case filled with unknown items that will help the town of Hardingwood.
Wrestling with Cases is an actual play episode of CBR+PNK. Bill, Nugh, and Rusty are hired to steal a case filled with unknown items that will help the town of Hardingwood.
Your Twist Is My Command is an actual play podcast of Twisted Wishes and Tricube Tales. Nugh, Ailbh, and Sadie fill in as temp genies, twisting the wishes to never grant exactly what the wishers want.
Your Twist Is My Command is an actual play podcast of Twisted Wishes and Tricube Tales. Nugh, Ailbh, and Sadie fill in as temp genies, twisting the wishes to never grant exactly what the wishers want.
Nasty, Marty, and Sadie get in touch with their primal sides as they attempt to save the world (per usual) before completely losing themselves to the beast within in this actual play podcast of Honey Heist.
Nasty, Marty, and Sadie get in touch with their primal sides as they attempt to save the world (per usual) before completely losing themselves to the beast within in this actual play podcast of Honey Heist.
On a plea from an injured pigeon, Bill and Sadie take to the skies to infiltrate a dangerous mountainside fortress, with more at stake than they realise... One Flew the Coup is an actual play podcast of Dicing With Death.
On a plea from an injured pigeon, Bill and Sadie take to the skies to infiltrate a dangerous mountainside fortress, with more at stake than they realise... One Flew the Coup is an actual play podcast of Dicing With Death.
A haunting crime is relived. A cast of suspects is identified. Will the truth be revealed and justice finally prevail? Join Nasty and Sadie as they help Armando solve his parents' murders! Old Cases New Face is an actual play podcast of 24 Hour Crime Scene.
A haunting crime is relived. A cast of suspects is identified. Will the truth be revealed and justice finally prevail? Join Nasty and Sadie as they help Armando solve his parents' murders! Old Cases New Face is an actual play podcast of 24 Hour Crime Scene.
Ozob, Ailbh, and DI Deviteaux are thrown back through time to solve a long-unsolved murder. What secrets will be revealed? Who's the real murderer? And how scandalous can we make this? The Involuntary Time Detectives is an actual play podcast of 24 Hour Crime Scene.
Ozob, Ailbh, and DI Deviteaux are thrown back through time to solve a long-unsolved murder. What secrets will be revealed? Who's the real murderer? And how scandalous can we make this? The Involuntary Time Detectives is an actual play podcast of 24 Hour Crime Scene.
How to Play 24 Hour Crime Scene
24-Hour Crime Scene is a tabletop RPG in which the players collaboratively solve a murder mystery, by inventing the clues and attaching them to suspects and locations themselves. Ultimately, the solution to the murder is something they come up with together, and not something pre-planned by the GM.
In the episodes, I will be facilitating the game, but it can easily be played without a GM entirely.
There are three sheets of paper that are shared among the players in this game-- a crime scene to show the location of the murder, a Victim sheet as the players uncover clues about the victim, and some suspect sheets to track clues that connect to the suspects.
During the game, the players decide where the murder happened, and who the victim is, and establishing some clues.
Then, the players take turns. On each player's turn, they draw a card and answer a prompt associated with it. For purposes of the episode, the facilitator will draw from a single deck of cards and read the prompts to the players to answer.
Then, the active player takes an action which may result in a scene. They can investigate by establishing something about the crime scene, the victim, existing evidence, or one of the clues. They can inverview a suspect, which means they will narrate some information that the suspect reveals during the interview-- that information is recorded on the suspect's sheet. They also can find a new suspect, and reveal what their link is to the victim, crime scene, or a clue.
Finally, on a player's turn they can Consult with the other players to determine some facts about the case. These questions should never be completely closed or absolute-- instead of "Did this person kill the victim?" they can ask "who seems to be more guilty?"
Once the player has done both things-- answered the prompt and taken their action-- the next player takes their turn.
When all the cards have been drawn and the last player finishes their turn, the players will have a final Consult scene to decide which suspect to charge with the murder. This discussion ends in a vote by the players. Whichever suspect gets a majority is charged with the crime, and justice shall be served.
Some tips for playing are to play with a very "yes and" mindset-- don't have an idea of who committed the crime in advance, and leave it open for interpretation. Do make a lot of connections between the various clues, evidence, and suspects so that they won't seem to be a random collection of things, but instead tie together into a complete story.
Welcome to a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. This is our quarterly rules discussion where we discuss the rules we played in the past dozen games, for mid year 2024. We’ll discuss the TTRPGs Psychic Cat Chaos, Dicing With Death, Alaria Valor and Company, Community Radio, Risus Epic, When Sky And Sea Were Not Named, Daggerheart, Roll For Shoes, Pocket Gumshoe, and Good Society.
Does your heart go out when players actually cry during an episode? Don't miss Trauma Poetry, in which Mary, Zidane, Bill, and Nugh play Good Society. Look alikes and mistaken identities abound, one character loses their magic, and we all suffer terribly for our misdeeds and bad reputations!
Does your heart go out when players actually cry during an episode? Don't miss Trauma Poetry, in which Mary, Zidane, Bill, and Nugh play Good Society. Look alikes and mistaken identities abound, one character loses their magic, and we all suffer terribly for our misdeeds and bad reputations!
Oh what people will do for love. Join Ailbh, Arethor, and Rusty as they prove that their friend Tess is innocent of a crime she was, admittedly, going to commit and in the process, discover a greater conspiracy to turn friends into lovers. Listen into this actual play podcast while we play Pocket Gumshoe to find out who is at the centre of this conspiracy.
Oh what people will do for love. Join Ailbh, Arethor, and Rusty as they prove that their friend Tess is innocent of a crime she was, admittedly, going to commit and in the process, discover a greater conspiracy to turn friends into lovers. Listen into this actual play podcast while we play Pocket Gumshoe to find out who is at the centre of this conspiracy.
How to Play Pocket Gumshoe
Pocket Gumshoe is a very short, genre-agnostic implementation of the Gumshoe investigation game system. You play a character in a mystery, which you must solve by finding clues. Clues that must be found in order to progress the mystery are called Core Clues, and you cannot miss them. If you spend time in a scene where there's a core clue, and you use an appropriate approach to looking for the clue, you will get the clue. No dice roll required. You do use a six-sided die for other types of actions and for combat.
In Pocket Gumshoe, you have three investigative approaches: Academic, Interpersonal, and Technical, and for each of these you can have a number of tags that help define how you use that approach. In this game, each player starts with one rank in each approach, and can add two more ranks (distributed as they see fit). I gave players three tags per rank in an approach-- Pocket Gumshoe leaves this and skill points up to the GM's discretion.
Here's an example of using an investigative approach. I'm playing Tom, an elderly wizard who knows a lot about medicinal plants and likes to paint. I've been hired by a nobleman to find a stolen family heirloom, a necklace. I'm in the kitchen, where there's an elderly cook and a maid, working. I could use an interpersonal approach, and maybe one of my tags is "elderly," so I get along pretty well with older folks. I chat up the cook and learn that the lord fired a footman last week. On my character sheet, I have one rank in Interpersonal, and I want to get a little more information about this footman, so I spend it to get some more dirt. The maid overhears us and shares the gossip that the footman was always flirting with the nobleman's son. From the GM's side of this, the fired footman is a suspect, and the core clue was that the footman was fired-- I want the players to go interview the footman in a future scene, so this sets them up for that. The gossip about the footman is an extra clue, and may even give them leverage when they talk to the footman. When they go talk to the footman, I can still use my interpersonal approach and tags, but I no longer have a point in Interpersonal to spend and get extra clues or benefits. I can still use the ability, but I don't have extra points to spend. In a Gumshoe one-shot, your investigation approach points will not refresh, so use them wisely!
In addition to the investivative approaches, you have General Skills, and for this game, the players had 50 points to spend on the general skills. General skills are for actions that don't fall into clue-finding. They're things like athletics and driving, but also include your health points pool. Everyone starts with one point of health and stability. In Pocket Gumshoe, the GM can decide which skills to include or exclude. For our adventure, I excluded Shrink and Stability, as those are for mental health consequences and fit more into a horror investigation rather than fantasy action. I also added a Magic skill to give a general-purpose skill for Firebreathing Kittens who have magic abilities or knowledge. In this case, I also made a special rule that you cannot use a magical ability without spending a point, which we will talk about next.
When I want to do something that has a decent chance of failure and is not gathering a clue, I use one of the general skills and roll for it. For most skills, you do not need to have points in the skill to attempt to do it-- my custom Magic skill is an exception to that rule. Health and Stability skills are also not rolled-- they represent your physical and mental health points, and you lose them when you take damage.
When I roll in a test-- that's a static check to see if I succeed at a task, the GM usually tells me the difficulty, and I can spend some of my skill points to add to my roll. I roll one d6, and for each general skill point I spend, I add a point to the dice result. The skill points all must come out of the skill I'm using.
Let's say my character is inside the treasure vault at the castle, looking for clues. Just after he found a clue, the GM says "hey, roll Sense Trouble for me." I have a lot of points in that, but I decide that I'm a little cocky and hey, I just found a clue, so I only spend one point of Sense Trouble. I know that most of my general skills will not refresh in this one-shot. In a campaign, they refresh between adventures, or for physical abilities they refresh once per day. Health is regained when someone uses the Medic general ability, or at 7a rate of two Health points per day of rest.
I erase the point from my character sheet. Sense Trouble is another skill that works a little differently-- the GM tells me the difficulty after I spend the points, and in this case it's 3, which should be very easy, but wouldn't you know it? I roll a one, and even with my plus-one, I fail in my roll.
Now my character hears the ominous sound of the door clanging shut! Someone has shut him in! Now he needs to try to get out of here-- and he does so by looking at the general skills and saying "well, if I were a younger man, I'd use my strength to try and push the door open, but, alas, time has taken its toll. So instead, I am going to say that I PREPARED for this possibility, and I have a key to get out of here." The GM tells me the difficulty of that-- since it also now requires there to be a key and a keyhole on the inside of the vault-- is 5. That's VERY hard to do, but I have a few preparedness points, so I spend 3 of them. I roll my d6 and get a 3, but with the +3 from spending my Preparedness points, I succeed in the test. I open the door with the key and step out of the vault!
Unfortunately, the footman who had locked me into the vault is standing right there, with a cudgel, and he takes a swing at me! We're in combat!
Combat in Pocket Gumshoe goes like this: The GM decides which character acts first in the combat. In this case, the footman surprised me, so he'll go first.
When someone acts in combat, they use a relevant skill-- if they're in melee, it might be scuffling. If they're ranged, it'll be shooting. They can spend points from their skill pools to add to their to-hit numbers.
The difficulty to hit, unless there's a special circumstance, is 3. If the character has at least 8 ranks in Athletics, it increases to 4.
When you hit, you roll a single d6 for damage, and modify it based on your weapon and if the target is wearing armor. Armor reduces the damage, but does not prevent you from getting hit.
At the end of the character's turn, they decide who goes next in combat. The last person to act in the round gets to pick the first person to act in the next round-- which can be themselves!
I don't have much Athletics, but the footman's no fighter, either. Because I have fewer than 8 ranks in Athletics, the difficulty to hit me is 3. He spends an adversary point, and with my bad luck, he rolls three, which turns into a 4 with his +1. He hits. I don't have armor, and he's using a club, which gives a -1 to damage. He rolls a single d6 and subtracts one from the roll-- he rolls a three, and I remove two points from my health points. Ouch!
Now it's my turn to fight back. I'm really bad at fighting-- I have no ranks in it, and the GM describes the footman as being quite spry. But I do have magic, and I decide I'm going to teach this young punk a thing or two. I tell the GM I'm going to shoot bolts of lightning from my fingers, which we agree normally does +1 damage. I decide it really matters to me that I hit, so I spend three of my Magic skill points, which means I will definitely hit. I hit, and when I roll my damage, I get lucky and roll a 6, for 7 total points of damage. The footman's hair stands on end as I essentially taze him with magic. The GM says he's pretty dazed by that. Since it's the end of the round, I get to pick who goes next, and I decide to take the next turn and finish him off. I use my Preparedness again to declare that I have a set of manacles, and I'm going to use them on the footman, since he's at a disadvantage right now. The GM rules that since he's dazed, the footman isn't putting up much of a fight, and the difficulty is three. I spend the rest of my Preparedness points to ensure success. I roll a 1 on the die, but with my plus 3, I am guaranteed to succeed, and I have captured the footman in manacles!
The GM now gives me a chance to investigate him, perhaps by rifling through his pockets or interrogating him. I decide to rifle, and find the missing necklace! This is a core clue, so there's no dice roll involved. Success! I return the necklace to my employer, and turn the footman over to the city watch to face justice.
Finally, since I know it's going to come up, you might be wondering about what happens when characters want to help each other. Piggybacking is when one character takes the lead and the rest spend one point from their own pools to share the results. For example, let's say the footman escapes the manacles and runs away. I team up with my pals, Harry the spry rogue, and Richard, the armored knight. When we finally catch up to him, he's inside a hideout, and we need to sneak in to catch him. The GM tells us the difficulty is four. Harry has a bunch of points in Infiltrate, so he's ready to take lead. I have Infiltrate points as well, so I spend one to share in his result. Richard, wearing heavy armor, is not sneaky and doesn't have points in Infiltrate. He's still in the group, but because he can't be sneaky, the difficulty goes up by two. Harry needs to roll a 6 to succeed, so he spends four of his Infiltrate points, gets a 3 on the dice, and we all sneak into the hideout.
Later, Harry and I are trying to disarm a trap together. Richard's no good with mechanical things, and is standing watch, and Harry spent his skill points in other stuff, so I'm on the spot for disarming this trap. Harry has two points to spend on the attempt, and when the GM says it's a very difficult trap, with a difficulty number of 7, he spends all of them. I get to add all those points, minus one, to my dice roll, plus all the points I want from my own pool-- I spend all four of my Mechanics points, so between the two of us, I have a +5 on the roll. I roll the die and get a 1. The trap goes off, snaring both Harry and me in it, and Richard, who stood far enough back to stay out of range of the trap, laughs heartily, and then comes over to help free us.
Thanks for listening to this overview of how to play Pocket Gumshoe. Each Gumshoe game is a little different-- some add custom rules to give a particular tone to the game, or to support a specific genre. For example, in high power games, it's a common rule that the number of points you spend to attack is the minimum damage you can deal in damage. Pocket Gumshoe doesn't have that rule, so we will not be playing with it in this episode.
In this playthrough of Good Society, we follow Marty, Sadie, and Arethor as they dance through the salsa of salacious gossip and the polka of political maneuvering, to earn their crescendo of consequences.
In this playthrough of Good Society, we follow Marty, Sadie, and Arethor as they dance through the salsa of salacious gossip and the polka of political maneuvering, to earn their crescendo of consequences.
Scandals, lies, and intrigue fly as Ailbh and Armando join Ivy at her high society birthday party! Does love win out? Are the rumors true? Tune in to this actual play of the Good Society TTRPG and discover which bombshells are revealed!
Scandals, lies, and intrigue fly as Ailbh and Armando join Ivy at her high society birthday party! Does love win out? Are the rumors true? Tune in to this actual play of the Good Society TTRPG and discover which bombshells are revealed!
How to play Good Society.
Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Good Society. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play Good Society yourselves.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
- Theme
-
Tokens:
- Resolve tokens
- Monologue tokens
- Five tone setting questions
-
Building your major character
-
Desire cards
- Relationship cards
- Family background
-
Role sheet
- Reputation conditions
- Inner conflict
- Connections
- Public information sheet
- Eight phase cycle of play
-
- Novel chapter
- Reputation
- Rumor and scandal
- Epistolary
- Novel chapter
- Reputation
- Epistolary
- Upkeep
The theme of Good Society is that you’re playing as a character who would have fit in comfortably in a Jane Austen novel. This game is a fictional portrayal of the genteel social class in England in the 1810’s. These people aren’t royalty, so they don’t have any royal obligations, but they also are so rich that they never have to work a day in their lives. How is that possible? Through the system of primogeniture, where only one child inherits all of the family’s money, concentrating everything on them so they can pass on the family name and social status. The other kids are out of luck. If you are born into the genteel social class as a boy then your job is to make sure that you’re the one who gets your family’s inheritance. If you’re born into this social class as a girl then your job is to marry a rich husband. Fail to marry well, and you might have to get a job, which means you have lost the game and are out of the genteel class. Maybe your old friends will hire you to sew them a dress for a party one day, but that’s the only time you would ever see them or your old lifestyle again. For the guys, if you fail to make yourself the one who inherits all of your family’s money, the military is an option for working a few years and retiring on a hefty officer’s pension. You just have to hope you don’t die while serving, and hope you’re not too old to find a wife by the time you get out. Your life path is up to you. Your imagination is your only limit in this fictional portrayal of the genteel social class in the 1810’s England. You lose if you have to get a day job. And also, in the words of Jane Austen herself, “Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without Affection.” That was the theme, now let’s talk about Good Society’s mechanics.
Tokens. Spending tokens is the major mechanic of Good Society. You won’t be rolling dice or drawing cards. Instead, you have a limited resource action economy in how many tokens you still have left to spend. Each player starts with two resolve tokens on each character they control. The facilitator starts with three resolve tokens. You spend resolve tokens during the novel chapter phase, reputation phase, and epistolary phase. You get more resolve tokens from reputation tags and during the rumors and scandals phase and the upkeep phase.
Resolve tokens represent your character’s determination to pursue their goals. You don’t need to spend one for most actions you want to do. Simply speak as your character and act out the role play of your character talking to your fellow players, who will respond speaking as the characters you are talking to. But you will need to spend a resolve token sometimes. Specifically, when you want to compel someone else’s character to do something, add a twist that makes the game more interesting, make a momentous change that significantly alters the story, establish a past relationship with a character you up until now didn’t know, ruin the plan or harm the interests of another player’s character, or learn about a delicious piece of gossip you would have otherwise been unlikely to learn. Doing these types of actions will require spending a resolve token, and if you’re out of them, then you can’t.
I made this quick acronym for remembering when you need to use a resolve token: C for compelling someone else’s character to do something, I for making the game more interesting, M for momentous, big changes, E for establishing a prior relationship with a character where none existed before, R for ruining the plans or harming the interests of a major character or connection, U for unlikely or difficult actions succeeding. Compel, Interesting, Momentous, Establish, Ruin, Unlikely. Kimeru, use a resolve token.
Do you want to compel Emma’s player to have Emma accidentally trip the Duke’s wife at a ball, or fall in love with a person of ill-repute, or arrange a meeting between your character and Emma’s brother? Spend a resolve token to begin negotiations with Emma’s player. Do you see a point where you could punch up the plot and make the storyline of someone else’s character more interesting? Spend a resolve token, and make the suggestion. Does Fitzwilliam’s player want to make a momentous, significant change to the story such as making Charles’ carriage overturn on his way to the estate so he misses the ball? Spend a resolve token and enter negotiations. You can also use a resolve token to establish a relationship with a character where you two didn’t know one another before. Spend the resolve token and start a flashback, acting out a scene from the past, establishing that connection. Do you want your character Lady Thorn to overhear gossip learning that Agnes is illegitimate? That’s harmful to Agnes’s player’s interests and unlikely to happen just by chance, and definitely qualifies to have a resolve token spent. Enter negotiations with Agnes’s player. Compel, Interesting, Momentous, Establish, Ruin, Unlikely. Kimeru, use a resolve token.
I keep mentioning negotiations as I talk about resolve tokens. What are negotiations? They are a way to formalize consent during this Good Society role playing game. If you’re spending a resolve token so your character can accomplish something unlikely or to make a momentous change to their story, the resolve token is simply spent and returns to the bank. But if you’re affecting another player’s character, consent is the name of the game. The negotiation process helps both parties reach an agreement they are satisfied with. If the negotiation is successful, the person whose character is affected gets your resolve token instead of the token going to the bank. That player can spend that resolve token later.
A small note for clarity: helping one player in a situation where two players’ interests are competing is not considered harming the other player. For example, if two people are both plotting to marry the same target, spending time with the target is not harmful to the other person’s interests even though wooing the target makes the other player less likely to win their affection. The token spent to gain significant alone time with the love interest doesn’t need to be negotiated with that player and would go to the bank.
Here are the steps for negotiating. Negotiation step one: Player one offers their resolve token to the player who controls the affected major character or connection. Player one clarifies exactly what they want to achieve with the token. Negotiation step two: The affected player can choose to accept the token, can accept the token with a condition, or can reject the token. If they accept the token, then exactly what player one specified, happens. Go ahead and role play that. The token goes to the pool of the character who was affected. If the player whose character is affects puts a condition on their acceptance of the token by saying “Yes, but only if…” and explains a condition required for them to accept the token, then the player offering their token can either agree or withdraw their token offer. Here is an example of a successful conditional negotiation from the rulebook. Tammy controls a connection named Geoff, a rich young bachelor. Edwin controls Charlotte. Edwin offers a resolve token to Tammy and says, “I want Geoff to invite Charlotte on a beautiful nature walk around his estate.” Tammy replies, “Yes, but only if Geoff also brings his sisters.” Edwin agrees, and hands his token to Tammy. Tammy puts it in Geoff's pool of resolve tokens. Edwin is already thinking about Charlotte's schemes for how to get rid of Geoff’s sisters during the walk. Lastly, if the player whose character is affected rejects the token, then the person who offered the token can’t spend it. They keep it, and the proposed event does not happen. You can try a different approach, or you can move on.
Monologue Tokens. Along with resolve tokens there is a second minor type of token, monologue tokens. Everyone starts each cycle with one monologue token, so that’s one per session. You can play your monologue token on another player at any time. Hand them a token and ask them a question, for example, “Who does Henry actually love?” Ohis example question asks about their plans: “Does Emma intend to go through with this marriage?” The monologue token is then consumed and discarded. That player must immediately do a monologue, truthfully revealing their major character’s inner thoughts, feelings, and plans. Depending on how much hidden information you’ve set your session of Good Society up to have, a monologue can be game changing. You only have one monologue token. Use it wisely, but like, do actually use it. If you don’t use your monologue token during play, you have to spend it during the upkeep phase at the very end of the cycle. They don’t accumulate. One last thing to think about for monologue tokens is that if there is a mechanical way in the game to force a character to tell the truth, that implies that you don’t have to be telling the truth the rest of the time. Good Society is a hidden motivations game, with a clear divide between public and private information. Lying is part of the game. Or I guess I should say, flattery.
Game setup begins by answering five tone setting questions. In Good Society, each group of people playing can choose the tone of their game. There are five questions on pages thirty three through thirty five that the group should have an answer for together before the start of the game. Question one: What tone should the story have: drama, romantic comedy, or farce? This can determine the playset you use, which character roles you can play and what motivations they can have. Question two: How important is historical accuracy: a little, somewhat, or very important? Question three: How will we treat the gender power balance: historical, off, or in reverse? The authors would like to note that Jane Austen’s work never grapples with racial prejudice, so in Good Society it does not exist and characters may be of whatever race they choose without incident. Question four: How much hidden information will be used in the game: none, or will each player’s desire card be hidden from other players? In that case, share the information from the public knowledge section of the desire card. Question five: Is there anything our game should avoid?
Building your major character: You’re going to be role playing as more than one character when you play Good Society: one major character and a few connection characters. The major character you’ll spend most of your time roleplaying as is built by choosing a desire which comes with a relationship, choosing a family background, a role, an inner conflict, and some connections. Let’s count those things: desire one, which has a linked relationship two, family background three, role four, inner conflict five, and connections six and seven. Your major character is defined by these seven aspects in Good Society.
Desire cards are reddish pink colored. They have a front and a back. The desire card front has a Jane Austen quote. The back has specific details about how that desire motivates your major character. New players are probably going to want to read both the front and the back when choosing their major character’s desire. Once you’ve played Good Society a few times, you can use the front quote as a character creation randomizer to add replayability to the game. Because one front quote is shared by multiple desire card backs, even if you play Good Society a lot and eventually memorize all the quotes, you won’t know specifically which desire card back you’re picking. Experienced players can choose their major character’s theme by choosing their quote, and then look at the desire card’s back to see the specific details. Here is an example desire card front side quote. “Our scars make us know that our past was real.” End quote. That is shared by desires number four, thirteen, and fourteen.
There are twenty one different desires to choose from. Here is an example desire card: Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure. That is the card’s Jane Austen quote front. The back says four things. First: Best or humiliate your cousin in every matter and win your uncle’s inheritance. The second thing on this card is: Your uncle has recently turned his mind to settling his affairs. As he has no children of his own, his substantial inheritance can fall to only one of two parties. Yourself, or your infuriatingly perfect cousin. The third thing on the card says: This wealth will elevate you from among the poorest of your peers to among the richest. Your cousin may have bested you many times prior. But from this day forth they shall never best you hence. And lastly it says: Create your uncle as a mandatory connection. Because that is desire card number seventeen, you get a specific relationship card for that desire. Check the playset for which number relationship is linked with that number desire.
There are twenty one different desires to choose from. Here is a second example desire card. The front Jane Austen quote says: There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. The back says four things. First: Save your family from financial ruin so you can break off your engagement. Second: The irresponsible actions of your spendthrift family have left you all in dire financial straits. And you are the one to suffer for it! Your father refused to sell the family estate; instead he arranged for your engagement to some insufferable rich person. Three: You must act before you find yourself married. Sort out your family’s financial problems- whether by selling the estate or marrying off a more willing sibling- then call of the engagement post-haste. Four: public knowledge: you are engaged. That’s right, all the other players know is that you are engaged, not how you feel about it or what you’re planning to do about it. Because that is desire card number fifteen, you consult your playset, and get the corresponding relationship card for that desire.
Relationship cards are automatically determined by the your desire card’s number. You can consult the playset to see which relationship card is linked with the number of the desire you chose. For example, desire card number sixteen gets you relationship card number thirty one. The playset sets the tone and might change the relationship card you receive. For example in a romantic comedy, desire card one gets relationship card twenty four. But in a drama toned playset, that same desire card one gets a different relationship card, number twenty nine. Before the game starts, each player needs to determine which relationship card is linked to your desire, and then give your relationship card to a fellow player. You should receive exactly one relationship card from someone, and it should be from someone other than the person you gave your card to. If you see the words giver and taker on the relationship card, ‘Giver’ refers to the person who picked up the relationship card originally with their desire card. ‘Taker’ refers to the person who will take the card from the giver. Here is an example relationship card. The public information side of the card says Acquaintances. The giver and taker of this card became friends during a season in London three years ago. The private side of the relationship card says Secret Fiances. The giver and taker of this card have been secretly engaged for years, despite the disapproval of one of their families. While the giver wishes to go ahead, the taker has become reluctant. The taker is higher in social status or wealthier than the giver. Before the game, you should have two discussions with the two players you gave your card to and received a card from, about what that means for the relationships between the characters you control. Remember, you control not only your main character, but also two connection characters.
Family background. Every player character has a family background sheet. It looks like a thin column that you can add on to the role sheet, the main character sheet. Your family background will determine your starting reputation tags, and will tell you what criteria to meet to raise your reputation, and what sorts of situations will lower your reputation.
The positive starting reputation tags are listed after the triangle shape. For example, the old money family background has the possible starting positive reputation tags of sensible, well-connected, dependable, generous, and caring. Choose one of these positive starting reputation tags at the beginning of the game. Negative starting reputation tags are listed after the upside down triangle shape. For example, the Old Money family background has the possible negative starting reputation tags of old-fashioned, miserly, overbearing, self-obsessed, and tasteless. Also choose one negative starting reputation tag at the beginning of the game.
The family background sheet also explains the criteria for how to raise and lower your reputation. There are three ways to gain a positive tag, and three ways to gain a negative reputation tag. For example, if someone from the old money family background acted in obedience to society’s conventions despite considerable hardship in doing so, they would gain a positive reputation tag. If someone from the old money family background shamed or embarrassed the family name, they would gain a negative reputation tag. Another example is that if someone from the military publicly displayed strong emotions, they would gain a negative reputation tag. If someone from the clergy background rejected a heartfelt request for help, they would gain a negative reputation tag.
During the game, you can exchange reputation tags for resolve tokens. Invoke that word in the thing you are roleplaying to receive a resolve token that you can offer to another character. If they accept the resolve token, erase the reputation tag from your sheet. Here is an example: William does something purehearted for his uncle, and exchanges his reputation tag of purehearted for a resolve token that he offers to his uncle’s player in exchange for being forgiven enough for his past gambling to be invited to his uncle’s dinner. That’s a way to use your reputation tags. Trading negative tags for resolve tokens is one way to get them off your sheet so they won’t count towards reputation conditions.
Once you’ve chosen your family background, you can add that to your role sheet. The family background is like an extra column of paper that fits on the side of the layout.
Role sheet. Each player character has a role sheet, which is a bit like a character sheet or a playbook in other games. A role can only be played by one person in each group of players. The sheet has a picture of a person in the outfit fitting their role, and a big name, like The Dowager, or The Tutor, or The Hedonist, or The New Arrival.
Chapter 9 in the rulebook on characters starting on page 213 discusses strategies for how to play the role you picked. For example as the heir, the strategy guide section talks about how the heir is plagued with financially motivated suitors, how to see through the gold diggers, ways to roleplay being weighed down by family pressure and obligation, how to take advantage of the benefits of nepotism, and suggestions for who to make as your connections.
Fill out the description of your character. Write the starting positive and negative reputation tags you chose, one of each, from the family background sheet.
Each role sheet has four reputation conditions on it. These are inactive to start the game. You can activate one of your two negative or positive reputation conditions by getting three reputation tags of that type. Reputation tags are adjectives describing how society sees you. The triangles are next to positive words everyone thinks about you, and the downward pointing triangles are next to negative tags everyone thinks about you. You gain reputation tags during the reputation phase if you met the reputation criteria listed on your family background sheet when you were roleplaying during the novel chapter phase.
Inner conflict. Write something your character needs in the left inner conflict blank and a contrasting need in the right inner conflict blank on your role sheet. An example of inner conflict is being torn between your desire for revenge and need for acceptance. Another example is love and duty. Another example is being torn between family and independence. Your character could be juggling their anxiety and maintaining their mental health, versus their need for control, power, and order. At the end of the cycle of play, so at the end of a session, look at the checklist and reflect on your character’s behavior. Mark where the character has acted on one side of the conflict or the other, or both. Gain one resolve token for each box you marked, to a maximum of two tokens per cycle. Update the public information sheet to reflect how many boxes you have filled in, too. Boxes stay filled in until the inner conflict is settled. When it is, at the end of the session you can create a new inner conflict, and you get to take an expanded backstory action. The expanded backstory actions are: create a new connection, play an extra connection, change a connection’s fortune, establish a relationship, or create a new major character.
Connections are people who know a major character and are important to them. For example a grandparent, sibling, school friend, potential suitor. The role sheet might have a mandatory connection, you have to create that person first. The remaining connection spots should be filled with people who have strong feelings towards your character and will put pressure on you. To create a connection, pick a connection card, and note that the two sides, a, and b, are two options. They’re similar but slightly different people. Pick one of them. Fill out a connection sheet with the connection’s name, relationship with the major character, who the major character is they’re connected to, the connection’s opinion of the major character, and the connection’s age and card number.
You are creating connections related to your main character and then handing those people to the other players and facilitator to role play. The rulebook suggests each person roleplays as one major character and one connection, and the facilitator roleplays as the remaining connections. When you are role playing as a connection, try to be a tool in the major character’s plots and schemes. Make it your goal to complicate the lives of the major characters. Connections start with two resolve tokens each, which the person controlling them can spend to impact the story. Here are some example things you can do when roleplaying a connection. If you play their parent, express disapproval over the person they want to marry. If you play their old flame, tell someone about your past together. Connections should be open to participating in schemes. If a major character tries to trick you, believe them for a moment.
Great! Your characters are built. Let’s talk about the phases of gameplay.
Public information sheet. When playing Good Society, everyone should be able to see this document. The public information sheet tracks collaboration decisions, rumors and scandals, major character information such as their reputation tags, connections, and monologue and resolve tokens. This can be a printout that you write on if you’re playing in person, or a doc file visible to all if playing online.
The cycle of play is a series of eight phases. First is novel chapter, second is reputation, third rumor and scandal, fourth epistolary. Repeat those without the rumor and scandal phase, and do upkeep. Do that once and it’s one cycle. The rule book says you can expect each cycle to take two to three and a half hours, and suggests that one cycle is perfect for a single session. A full game of Good Society lasts between three and eight cycles.
Novel chapter is the in-character role playing phase. This is when you speak as your character to pursue your secret desire. It’s called novel chapter because if someone wrote down the words you speak during this phase, it’d read like a portion of one of Jane Austen’s stories. This phase is what you will be doing the majority of the time you’re playing Good Society. There are three types of novel chapters: events that star the whole cast at a party or gathering, visitations that are opportunities for more intimate conversations with fewer than the whole cast often featuring a few different visits between two or three people, and split chapters, which portray simultaneous but related events in different places, happening in parallel.
Reputation is the phase where everyone pauses roleplay to track the rise or fall of each character's reputation. Step 1: assess character behavior against reputation criteria. Step 2: create reputation tags. Step 3: Trigger reputation conditions. Step 4: Remove reputation conditions if tags have fallen below three.
Reputation criteria are actions your major character has to do to raise or lower their reputation. If your major character did something to meet a positive or negative reputation criteria during the novel chapter phase, create a reputation tag for them. Reputation tags are adjectives that are either positive, upward pointing triangle, or negative, downward pointing triangle. Writing a third reputation tag of a type triggers a reputation condition, which is listed on your role sheet. Choose one of the two reputation criteria of that type, either positive or negative. The reputation condition remains active as long as you have three tags of that type.
Here is an example. Beatrice already has the positive reputation tag brave and ladylike. During the past novel chapter, she fulfilled the positive reputation criteria that said “act in the service of duty or morality in a way that compromises their desires.” She went and played lawn croquet on a team with her father, who doesn’t want her to get fond of or marry Henry, when he called, even though she was talking to Henry at the time. During the game she helped her father talk to Judge Eustice and his daughter Penelope. Everyone had a great time and the judge invited them to attend his large party next month. The player adds the reputation tag Pleasant Sporting Partner to Beatrice’s role sheet next to an upward pointing triangle. This is Beatrice’s third positive reputation tag. She now activates one of the two positive reputation conditions on her character sheet. She chooses to activate “Stay With Us. You are a welcome guest in any household, and may stay wherever you choose while this boon remains active.” The reputation condition stays active unless she drops below three positive reputation tags.
Rumor and scandal is the only phase of Good Society that happens once per cycle. Everyone pretends to be society as a whole instead of their individual characters, and collaboratively creates rumors. This phase determines which rumors were merely whispers, and which become full blown scandals discussed in every drawing room in town.
Step 1: Players go around in a circle and either create or spread a rumor. Create a rumor by writing it on the public information sheet. Put a checkmark or an X in the circle next to the rumor to show it has been spread. When you reach the end of the circle, reverse it and go back, each player getting a second turn. The person who goes first will also go last. A rumor can only be spread once ever. Rumors that were not spread start to fade, and rumors that were spread have now been heard by all the characters. A player can spend a resolve token during the novel chapter phase to have a widely spread rumor affect the story. Cross off the rumor after spending the resolve token.
Step 2: Add a fading symbol like the stock market going down next to any rumor that was not spread this phase. Cross off any rumor that already had a fading symbol from a previous rumor phase. People can no longer spend resolve tokens to have that crossed off rumor affect the story.
Epistolary is a phase for writing letters. You can correspond with someone you trust, confessing your inner thoughts and feelings, or perhaps send a missive to set up a machination, preparing to enact a scheme in the future. Each player should write up to two letters from either your major character or a connection you control. State who the letter is from and who it’s to, and then dictate its contents. You can also use a resolve token to initiate a letter written to you by literally anyone. For example, Frances’s player can spend a resolve token to receive a letter saying that his aunt is sending him a horse. Or someone can offer a resolve token to George’s player and negotiate George receiving a letter saying that his student loan debt payment is two weeks past due.
Repeat the novel chapter, reputation, and epistolary phases again to role play, track the changes in reputation, and then write about what happened. The final epistolary is your chance to write your character’s epilogue and future plans.
Lastly, the cycle ends by performing upkeep. Spend your monologue token if you haven’t yet. Adjust your desires and inner conflicts so that next time you meet, your character can continue on a path to their goal. We are going to play Good Society in just a single session, but the authors recommend playing Good Society for three to eight cycles. They estimate you can probably fit in one cycle each session.
Here are some specific instructions for players in my game. The rule book has some setup guidelines for us because we will have three to four players and a facilitator and will be meeting for fewer than four cycles. Page 50 says each player should create two connections. Page 28 suggests not using the inner conflict on the role sheet or the expanded backstory rules for short campaigns, but we’re still going to because we won’t have another chance to see all the mechanics. Page 28 also says rumors don’t fade out during the rumor and scandal phase, we can do that. Also, don’t change your desires during the upkeep phase, and every player gains one resolve token during the upkeep phase. Those are the set up guidelines the rule book recommends for us.
The very last part of this how to play guide is where I talk about my instructions for my players as your facilitator for this upcoming game session. Given that we’re using Good Society in our existing setting with characters we’ve played lots of times, I want you to feel comfortable with your character’s Good Society portrayal, and I want you to embrace the changes to your character’s reputation and possibly marital status after this oneshot. Accurately portraying who they are is important. So consider this my ‘custom playset’ for oneshots for characters we have grown fond of playing in other ttrpgs. The following is my way to help these mechanics adapt better to your beloved characters and encourage a fun Good Society experience. Okay, here goes. First, desires. Normally in Good Society you look at a playset, such as the drama playset, farce playset, rivalry and revenge playset, et cetera. These playsets offer one more desire option than the number of players. For example, the romantic comedy playset limits you to choosing between desires number one, three, five, or nine for three players. For my custom playset, because you’re trying to fit your existing character in to Good Society, I think you can choose which desire card you pick from the entire desire deck, rather than picking from a limited list. More options should help you find one that make you comfortable adapting your character to this world. Next, relationships. Please consult all the prewritten playsets on pages 185 through 199 to see which relationship card is linked with the desire card you picked. Most of the desire cards seem to be linked with just one relationship card. If you find two relationship cards linked with your desire card because it appears in two different playsets, you can pick which one you use. Any relationship card you can find linked to your desire card in one of those playsets is completely valid. If none of them fit and you find an alternative relationship you like more, talk to me, I’m flexible. Third, choose a family background and choose one starting positive reputation tag, and one starting negative reputation tag. Fourth, role sheets. Please select your choice of role sheet from the entire list of options. The one that most suits your existing character works for me. The Good Society rules do say that you shouldn’t use a role sheet another player in your game is using, so if you can avoid that it would be great. If not, then accurately portraying your existing character is the priority. For this three player one session game, everyone should have two connections. Pick one side to play from the listed double sided connection card. Make each of your connections a sheet that says the player character's name, your relationship, and the connection's opinion of the player character. Each connection starts the game with two resolve tokens.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat, which is a bit more like social combat for this game, and skills. For everyone listening, we encourage you to find the Good Society rule book yourself, and play a game with friends. And if you’d like to hear an example adventure, I’m looking forward to playing Good Society in an upcoming session.
Bartholomew, Nugh, and Mervon receive a late-night cry for help. A gleaming wizard's tower and family issues? Don’t sleep on this episode! A Nod To Mother is an actual play podcast of Roll For Shoes.
Bartholomew, Nugh, and Mervon receive a late-night cry for help. A gleaming wizard's tower and family issues? Don’t sleep on this episode! A Nod To Mother is an actual play podcast of Roll For Shoes.
After a harrowing welcome to Silverwood Haven, Arethor, Qigiq, and Sadie embark on a quest seeking The Alchemist for… something. This episode uses v1.4 playtest rules for the Daggerheart game system.
After a harrowing welcome to Silverwood Haven, Arethor, Qigiq, and Sadie embark on a quest seeking The Alchemist for… something. This episode uses v1.4 playtest rules for the Daggerheart game system.
Floating jungle islands are rare so when they show up somebody has to explore them. And who better than Qigiq, Ivy Green, and Colette three of the Firebreathing Kittens? Come listen as they find wind monsters, become influencers amongst lizard people, and find something quite unexpected at the center of this mysterious island! Tales of the Wind is an actual play podcast of When Sky And Sea Were Not Named.
Floating jungle islands are rare so when they show up somebody has to explore them. And who better than Qigiq, Ivy Green, and Colette three of the Firebreathing Kittens? Come listen as they find wind monsters, become influencers amongst lizard people, and find something quite unexpected at the center of this mysterious island! Tales of the Wind is an actual play podcast of When Sky and Sea Were Not Named.
A simple errand turns into an impromptu audit as Sadie, Mary, and Bartholomew investigate the astronomic inflation in Shireford Upon Emou. Tune in to this Risus Epic adventure to see if they can solve the town's financial woes!
A simple errand turns into an impromptu audit as Sadie, Mary, and Bartholomew investigate the astronomic inflation in Shireford Upon Emou. Tune in to this Risus Epic adventure to see if they can solve the town's financial woes!
Welcome back listeners! Today, Fennis, Mervon and Sadie are playing "Community Radio". In this episode, we draw back a bit, instead of following a single adventure, Niqamui itself is the focus, more specifically- the local radio station's coverage of some of the supernatural events that take place in Niqamui's casual day-to-day. Breaking Council Decrees! Cult politics! 24hr coverage of the slow encroachment of ominous fog! All this and more are coming up, so don't touch that dial!
Greetings and welcome to the Firebreathing Kittens. This is a short overview of how to play Community Radio.
Community Radio is a story and improv focused game. We don't have character sheets. Instead, the players play out slice of life moments from a strange community, while the GM plays the Host of the community's radio station.
The mood of a Community Radio game captures the voice of a community the way Welcome to Nightvale or Northern Exposure can capture the voice of a community. The game is written by Quinn Murphy and is available at thought crime games.itch.io. A second edition is currently in development. The Firebreathing Kittens will be playing version 1.2 of the game. Community Radio is also the basis for the excellent game Radio Free Kaiju, which centers on a community surviving a world populated by giant, deadly monsters.
Prior to the game, all the players have submitted to the GM the following ideas:
An Innocent Person
A Terror
A Place of Interest
A Mood
A Strange Item
Up to 3 original songs or poems to be aired on the radio station.
* Optionally, up to 3 decrees from the Niqamui Community Council, to be read on air.
The GM has taken these elements and shuffled them into a very loosely connected series of slice of life scenes that the players will play out in an improv manner. Each slice of life scene is 3-5 minutes long.
After a slice of life scene, there is a short musical interlude. During the musical break, players who were just in the scene write decrees, sometimes about the scene, or about a previous scene, or just about something else entirely. These decrees are secretly passed to the Host, who selects from the available decrees during the Radio Scene.
Radio scenes have a bumper, a report from the Host reacting to and interpreting the slice of life scene, and lastly a decree by the Council. The Host is not allowed to break Council decrees, and the decrees often respond to actions during the slice of life scene.
You'll notice there is nothing about "how do you fight in this game" or "how do I convince someone to do what I want." As an improv-heavy game, Community Radio relies on players to adjudicate using "yes, and" to narrate what their characters are doing and how successful they are. The game is heavily player-generated, with the Host acting as an interpreter more than anything else.
For purposes of the Firebreathing Kittens format, I have added some structure to the scenes so they aren't as random as suggested in the Community Radio rulebook. The key elements are all provided by the players, however, as are all the decrees.
I hope you enjoy our episode featuring Community Radio.
FBK is hired to protect two children as they undergo a pilgrimage. What no one yet realizes is the true danger spreading in the blessed grove. Join Bill, Qigiq, and Armando as they seek a sense of justice and work to become true heroes in this actual play podcast of Alaria Valor and Company.
FBK is hired to protect two children as they undergo a pilgrimage. What no one yet realizes is the true danger spreading in the blessed grove. Join Bill, Qigiq, and Armando as they seek a sense of justice and work to become true heroes in this actual play podcast of Alaria Valor and Company.
During a regular shopping trip, Demyan and Jimmy Potatoes are rudely whisked off by pirates to break into a mysterious complex, which holds secrets that could change the face of the planet... This episode uses the 'Dicing With Death' Playtest TTRPG.
During a regular shopping trip, Demyan and Jimmy Potatoes are rudely whisked off by pirates to break into a mysterious complex, which holds secrets that could change the face of the planet... This episode uses the 'Dicing With Death' Playtest TTRPG.
Fennis, Sadie, and Mervon get body swapped with their furry friends. Can they get back? Are greebles real? SHOULD they be? Tune in! CATegorical Success is an actual play podcast of Psychic Cat Chaos.
Fennis, Sadie, and Mervon get body swapped with their furry friends. Can they get back? Are greebles real? SHOULD they be? Tune in! CATegorical Success is an actual play podcast of Psychic Cat Chaos.
Marty, Colette, and Sadie are thrown into a most terrifying retro horror story using Summer Camp Slayers game mechanics. Tag along and see who survives the night, and whose light fizzles out.
Marty, Colette, and Sadie are thrown into a most terrifying retro horror story using Summer Camp Slayers game mechanics. Tag along and see who survives the night, and whose light fizzles out.
Hello everybody this is a special episode of the Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I am the Gamemaster for an upcoming episode where I’ll be using the mechanics from the tabletop role-play game, summer camp slayers. You can catch me as ‘Tord Unfrid’ playing a similar game that uses a different flavour of the same mechanics called Pirates of the Bone Blade in episode 266 of the Firebreathing Kittens Podcast. Summer camp slayers is a table top role-play game designed by Richard Woolcock from Zadmar Games using his universal Tricube game system and you can find this and more on DriveThruRPG. I will speak more on the TriCube system towards the end of episode here but for now let’s get into those game mechanics.
General Mechanics:
In summer camp slayers, you roll between one and three D6 6 sided dice, depending on your characters archetype and you compare your highest result against the difficulty set by the game master. For instance, you may roll two 6 sided dice and have a 3 and 5 on the dice the game master set the difficulty at five meaning you have one success. You start with 2D6 add a die to your roll if what you’re doing falls in line with your trait and you remove a die if what you’re doing falls outside the scope of your concept but we'll get into that more during the character creation section. The main thing to remember going forward is that together your trait and concept make up your characters archetype forming half of your character design, the other half of the character design comes from your perks and quirks.
Perks and Quirks (Archetype) Overview:
Speaking of perks and quirks, they allow you to influence the difficulty of the challenge you face. You can influence the difficulty of the task by expending one of your karma points to reduce the difficulty of the task by 1 if you can explain how your perk aids you in that moment. You can also decide to make the difficulty of the task harder before rolling, increasing it by 1, describing how your quirk negatively effected you. If you fail the task when using your quirk you get a karma back but if you succeed you can choose to regain a resolve instead if you'd like. If a player runs out of resolve they are typically removed from the scene and gain an affliction. Afflictions are described by the victor and are treated as temporary quirks for your player. A character with three affliction is retired from play, although they can be brought back if one of their afflictions is cured. Now that we've talked about how to decide the outcome of a challenge let's find out what happens if you succeed or fail.
Success/Failure:
Succeeding a task with one single die above or meeting the difficulty rating will result in a normal success, any additional successful die roll will be a exceptional success. Exceptional successes typical provide additional removed effort tokens or beneficial effects as decided by the game master. The same is true however for failures as well with the distinction being that you have to roll all 1’s on your dice for it to be a critical failure, this typically involves losing double the amount of resolve or additional negative effects as decided by the game master and player such as gaining an affliction. Some tasks are simple and only require a single success to complete them, there are however harder tasks and in these instances effort tokens will be used. A harder task can require anywhere from 2-4 successes or more depending on the situation to whittle down that encounters effort tokens.
Character Creation:
Now that we know how the game works, let’s talk about creating a character. In Summer Camp Slayers you select from a list of four different options during character creation, those four options as discussed earlier are Trait, Concept, Perk and Quirk. At first all the these four terms may sound the same however they do function differently from each other, let’s get into that.
Traits:
We’ll start with trait, in this game system a trait is always the same, regardless of the flavour of the system you’re playing. A trait is one of the following: Agile, Brawny or Crafty; the ABC’s of Tricube! Agile covers things like quickness, dexterity, reflexes, or stealth; they also roll 3d6 for ranged combat. Brawny covers things like strength, toughness, stamina or athletics; they also roll 3d6 for melee combat. Crafty covers things like charisma, intellect, willpower or perception; they also roll 3d6 for mental combat (magic, persuasion, intimidation). Unless something falls within your trait you will roll 2d6, if it does happen to fall within your trait however you get to roll 3d6 instead! For example. A brawny kid would roll 3D6 when trying to lift something heavy off their friends, but only 2D6 if they were trying to avoid getting pinned by the same object as it's falling as that would be an Agile roll.
Concepts:
Next let's talk about concepts, as it is a bit more of a loose idea and changes depending on the flavour of the game type and world you're playing in. The concepts provided for Summer Camp Slayers are Counselor, nurse, lifeguard, groundskeeper, cook, activity leader or kid. Your concept may provide you additional knowledge or information in interactions with NPC's but mechanically it is only used when you're doing something outside the scope of that concept. Let's put that into perspective, let's say you're a Crafty Kid who is a Bookworm and Cautious, if you were to try to impersonate a police officer to cover a story you had about trying to sneak out late at night to investigate the weird things happening in the woods that would most likely go against your concept as a kid as it would be unbelievable. When something falls outside of the scope of your concept you lose a die from your pool before you roll, making a challenge more difficult. This can be offset with your trait, for example if you were instead trying to hotwire a car it would still be unlikely to happen as you're a kid but more likely because of your crafty trait leaving you with the normal 2D6 to roll.
Perks:
Now that we have gone over what makes up your archetype, and the type of traits and concepts, let's move on to talking about how to influence the difficulty of the roll using perks and quirks and which of each exist in this game. Let's start with perks, as they give you the ability to spend your Karma points to reduce the difficulty of your roll making your chances of success better. The perks available in Summer Camp Slayers are Bookworm, occult insight, quick, perceptive, persuasive, advanced combat training, or supernatural ability. If you can describe how your perk aids you during a challenge you can expend 1 Karma to reduce the difficulty of the check by 1. For example, a player with the perk of persuasive might be trying to impersonate a police office and that character has the persuasive perk they could expend 1 Karma to reduce the difficulty of the check by 1. In addition when making group checks there may be times where your perk allows you to bypass a check altogether, doing so still requires 1 Karma however. For example, a character with a supernatural ability may be able to open a locked door with their powers but doing so would still require the expenditure of 1 Karma, if the character is out of Karma describe how their perk comes up short in this moment.
Quirks:
Quirks are things that define your character and may make you more pre-disposed to having a difficult time in certain situations. The Quirks available in Summer Camp Slayers are Hothead, prankster, cautious, show-off, suspicious, sarcastic, or haunted. You can use your Quirk to make the difficulty of any check harder by 1, if you fail you gain 1 Karma but if you succeed you can choose to regain 1 Karma or 1 Resolve, if you regain resolve describe how your success even when facing insurmountable odds emboldens your resolve.
Karma and Resolve:
Let's talk now about Karma and Resolve. Each player starts with three of each and can spend, lose and regain both throughout the game session. When you run out of Karma nothing bad happens to your character, you just aren't able to influence the difficulty of checks positively anymore. If you run out of resolve however you could be temporarily removed from the scene and at best gain an affliction; if not both. For example, if your character is trying to jump off a roof to a nearby tree and fails their check and you only have 1 resolve remaining, reducing you to 0, your player may go unconscious temporarily and when they awake have a 'concussed' affliction. In another case your character may be trying to like we said before impersonate a police officer and if they fail perhaps they gain the 'untrustworthy' affliction.
Afflictions:
Affliction can be temporary or permanent depending on the severity of the failure. For instance if we use the examples above the concussed affliction would be temporary while the 'untrustworthy' affliction would be a more permanent one. Permanent afflictions cant be turned into quirks when leveling up to take advantage of them to regain resolve instead of them just being a hindrance. For example turning the untrustworthy affliction into a quirk might allow you to lie easier in the future as your reputation fades but the ability to land a false truth sticks like glue.
Leveling Up:
Speaking of leveling up, when doing so in this system you typically choose a new perk or quirk each level and increase either your karma or resolve by 1 every other level. You can opt out of choosing a new perk or quirk and instead choose to turn a permanent affliction into a quirk upon leveling up.
Combat and Challenges:
Now that we know how to create our character and the mechanics of the game, let's talk about combat and challenges. Generally in combat the Game Master will go around the table asking each of the players their actions for their turn choosing the turn order based on what narratively makes the most sense. The players will each choose their action and the game master will set the difficulty and the trait of the action. For example, a person swinging a sword at a Goblin with 2 effort tokens would have to roll a Brawny 5 check, if they were to shoot it they would roll a Agile 5 check and if they were to use magic against it they would roll a Crafty 5 check. The player would take into account their Trait to see if they could add any dice to their 2D6 pool, your concept does not matter during combat as it is assumed each character is trained in some form of combat. The player has an opportunity to make the difficulty higher before the roll using their Quirk or make the roll easier after their roll using their Perk as they see fit. If they roll a 5 or better on one of the dice the attack lands and one effort token is removed from the goblin, if they have more than 1 dice meet or beat a 5 they would remove 2 effort tokens and effectively remove the goblin from combat. The GM will go around the table having each player take a turn until all enemy combatants are removed from combat. Challenges are non-combat events that come up during a game like talking to NPC's, sneaking, lockpicking etc. and work in a similar way with the distinction being that challenges take into account your Concept as well, remove a dice from your 2D6 pool if it is outside your scope. For example, a Brawny Groundskeeper trying to use a flamethrower against zombies would only roll 1D6 as they don't benefit from their Trait and burning the well kempt nature of the camp would go against their concept.
Spells:
Many fantasy, horror, and even science fiction settings describe characters with supernatural powers such as telekinesis, alchemy, psionics, etc. These arcane gifts can be easily represented as perks. A character with such a perk can do anything a trained person in the setting could achieve with
appropriate tools, as long as it thematically fits their type of magic. Spending karma allows the mage to perform even greater feats of magic, overcoming any challenge a professional could manage with specialized gear. Mages can choose three spells during character creation; these determine how and when they can use their magic. Each spell needs to have a name and a limitation—e.g., “fiery bolt (destructive),” “lightning shield (personal),” “illusionary disguise (ritualistic),” etc. You can create more potent spells by giving them additional limitations. This narrows their scope, and the GM should be more flexible when interpreting their effect. Perhaps your “invisibility sphere” is ritualistic and requires a focus, but can be used to conceal the entire party. New spells are learned during play, at the GM’s discretion—perhaps a wizard can learn from scrolls or spell books, or maybe the GM awards sorcerers a new spell each time they gain an advance.
For the players in my upcoming session, please level up twice. Each level up will allow you to choose either one additional perk or quirk, if there aren’t any on the list that appeal to you feel free to come up with your own. Additionally please choose either your Karma or Resolve and increase it by 1 to a total of 4.
Hopefully this information regarding the rules is helpful to my players as they build their character and try to understand the mechanics of this game system. For everyone listening, we encourage you to find the Tricube system and other variants of it like Summer Camp Slayers for yourselves, and play a game with friends. If you'd like to hear an example adventure, I'm looking forward to playing Summer Camp Slayers in an upcoming session. Thank you everyone for listening and take care.
When Demyan and Armando find out a sneaky rabbit has stolen a Bag of Tricks, they hunger for justice! Will they follow their nose and find the culprit? Or will they be serially thwarted by multiple challenges? I Eat Challenges For Breakfast is an actual play podcast of the LUCAS rpg system.
When Demyan and Armando find out a sneaky rabbit has stolen a Bag of Tricks, they hunger for justice! Will they follow their nose and find the culprit? Or will they be serially thwarted by multiple challenges? I Eat Challenges For Breakfast is an actual play podcast of the LUCAS rpg system.
Ivy, Tord, Fennis, and Colette have to save a soup kitchen! Naturally this means a heist of a huge diamond, a fake murder, a duel, a pop song from the 70s, and a spaceship?! Join them on this exciting episode of Firebreathing Kittens! Come Fly To Space is an actual play podcast of the No Port Called Home RPG system.
Ivy, Tord, Fennis, and Colette have to save a soup kitchen! Naturally this means a heist of a huge diamond, a fake murder, a duel, a pop song from the 70s, and a spaceship?! Join them on this exciting episode of Firebreathing Kittens! Come Fly To Space is an actual play podcast of the No Port Called Home RPG system.
How to play No Port Called Home.
Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for No Port Called Home. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play No Port Called Home yourselves.
There are a dozen different races to pick from in No Port Called Home. They include humans, giant jotunn, amphibious nix, genetically enhanced vesp, nomadic hedonistic fae, indestructible robotic archon, freed former worker drone tsuku, and more. When you build your character, you will pick one of these races. Use the race’s character sheet as your starting character sheet, that you’ll add more and more things to later. The rule book has an example crew mate named Zephyr who is a tsuku race, a freed former worker drone. I will refer to Zephyr’s character sheet throughout this how to play guide, using Zephyr as an example.
Let’s talk about classes. No Place Called Home has nearly forty classes. You will pick three of them to build your character. These classes include a calibrist who obsessively optimizes a firearm, a swordfiend who stabs opponents with point objects, a martial artist who fights with their hands, a brute who fights with this chair they happened to find, a fortress that gains defensive bonuses as long as they hold their position, an engineer who can maintain and improve the team’s vehicle, a strategist who can delegate extra actions to their teammates, a con artist who and lies and fibs, a changeling who can rearrange their limbs, a conduit who can splice their mind into machines to remote listen to conversations, a swarmmaster with clouds of loyal insects, and more. Doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun options? Great news, you get to pick not one, not two, but three of them. Which three should you pick? The rule book suggests picking a combination of classes that empower you to take action both in and out of combat. Don’t limit yourself to only in-combat effects. For our example character build, Zephyr has the three classes of: martial artist who fights with their hands, freerunner who sprints and runs and does flips, and ranger, who prevents their teammates from setting off terrain effects through their expert guidance. Each class has some questions to think and write about. For example, among other questions, the ranger asks you to list four places you have been. The martial artist asks you, among other questions, if you advertise the fact that you are skilled in combat, or do you allow others to underestimate you? The freerunner asks you what you would do if a situation forced you to leave someone behind who could not run as fast. The three classes you pick will have questions that help you think about how your character would act.
Let’s talk about skills. There are four categories of skills: physical, social, knowledge, and practical. Physical skills include agility, dexterity, strength, your ability to orient yourself in zero gravity, stealth, endurance, and how well you squirm. Knowledge skills include your knowledge of biotech, history, people, places, engineering, computers, and medicine. Social skills include your ability to soothe, entertain, deceive, manipulate, persuade, command, and read people. Practical skills include your perception, survival, research, crafting, and piloting skills. There are more than twenty skills overall.
When you pick three classes, each class will come with points in skills and stats. Start out with a zero in all skills, and then add the numbers from your classes and write the total on your character sheet. For example, Zephyr is a martial artist, freerunner, and ranger. The martial artist gives them +2 in all physical skills, so that’s a 2 in agility, dexterity, strength, zero-g, stealth, endurance, and squirm. The martial artist also adds 2 in people reading. The freerunner adds 4 to agility and zero g, bringing those up to six, and adds two in stealth, endurance and squirm, bringing those up to four, and also adds two to entertain and perception. The ranger adds two to agility, endurance, stealth, knowledge of biotech, knowledge of places, soothe, perception, survival, and craft. That bumps Zephyr’s agility up to eight, and at six their endurance, zero-g, and stealth are pretty high, too. This has been an example of how to add your three classes’ skills together to get your character’s starting skill numbers.
Here are some example skill rolls Zephyr could make in No Place Called Home. Hungry in a field outside town, Zephyr might roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add their survival skill to forage for edible greens. If Zephyr was trying to think of a low cost bakery in town, you would roll on a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, plus their places skill number. If Zephyr was trying to persuade a non player character, or NPC, to give them a discount on day old baked goods, you would roll a d20 and add your persuade skill number. If you were trying to sneak past the baker to get into the kitchen, that would be a stealth roll of a d20 plus your stealth skill. If the baker found you and you wanted to jump out the window, that would be a d20 plus Zephyr’s agility skill. You would roll like this using your skills when attempting to accomplish a goal outside of combat.
Let’s talk about stats. Your character’s starting stats are the sum of the stats they get from their three classes. Add together the numbers in the symbols from each of your three classes and your race to get your starting stats. There are eight stats in No Place Called Home. Hit Points, attack, defense, initiative, skills per level, willpower, reflex, and fortitude.
Hit points are the cross symbol. If your character reaches negative ten hit points, they die. Zephyr has twenty two hit points, so if they take twenty two points of damage they would reach zero hit points and fall unconscious, and if they take thirty two points of damage, they would hit negative ten and die.
Attack is the symbol that looks like a sniper scope, and defense is the shield symbol. The attack skill is the number you add to a roll of a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, when you attack. You hit your target if you meet or beat their defense roll. When someone attacks you, roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add your defense number. If you beat their attack roll, their attack missed you and you take no damage. For example Zephyr has a three in attack and a four in defense. When trying to attack someone, Zephyr rolls their twenty sided dice and adds their attack of three. When being attacked by someone, Zephyr rolls a twenty sided dice and adds their defense of four. Because the average is a ten on a twenty sided dice, Zephyr’s average attack is thirteen and average defense is fourteen.
Here is an example attack. From their class bonuses, if they’re attacking unarmed, Zephyr gets two more conditional attack bonus from martial artist and one from freerunner. Their hands are 2 d4 bludgeoning weapons from their martial artist class. Zephyr swings a punch at their target. You roll a d20 and add your base attack, which is three, and also add your conditional attack because you are attacking unarmed. That’s a ten on the dice plus three base attack plus two plus one for conditional attack bonuses for being unarmed for a sixteen total to hit. Meet it to beat it. You would hit any enemy that has a sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, etc lower defense. To calculate the damage dealt, you would roll two four sided dice, also called d4, and add the results together. For example if one dice was a a three and one dice was a one, that would be four bludgeoning damage total from your martial artist’s fists.
Initiative is the symbol that looks like a diamond floating above a ripple on a pond. Initiative is the order people take action during combat. When a fight starts, everyone rolls a twenty sided dice and adds their initiative number. The highest rolls go first. For example Zephyr has a four in initiative. If Zephyr rolled a ten on their dice and added their four in initiative, the total would be fourteen. With fourteen as their initiative roll, Zephyr would take action before people who rolled a thirteen or below. But someone who rolled a fifteen or higher would get to take action before Zephyr.
Skills per level is the symbol that looks like a concave triangle with three dots on its three sides. Your character’s skills per level stat is how many skill ranks you gain each time you level up. These skill ranks are spread out amongst all your skills. When you level up, if you have the skill point for it, you can increase a single skill one point. Zephyr has a six in their stat of skills per level. This means that of the twenty six skills, they can increase six of them by one point each time they level up. For example, they level up and choose to increase their agility, dexterity, stealth, endurance, craft, and piloting skills by one point each. Because we’re talking about leveling up, I should mention that when you level up, you get to pick two feats that must be in different classes. My players, you will be leveling up twice, so you should have four feats total, with at most two of them in the same class.
Willpower is the circle symbol, reflexes is the diamond symbol, and fortitude’s symbol is a rectangle wider at the base than the top. Willpower, reflexes, and fortitude are all resistance bonuses. When a danger is attacking you in a specific way, your game master might prompt you to roll a saving throw. Zephyr’s willpower is 2. If the game master says the enemy is very scary and Zephyr should roll a willpower saving throw to see if they’re afraid or not, they would roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add their willpower of two. For willpower, Zephyr’s lowest possible roll is a three and highest possible roll is a twenty two. Zephyr’s reflex stat is seven. If the game master says the floor is collapsing under Zephyr and a successful reflex save will let them jump out of the way instead of falling, Zephyr would roll a d20 and add their reflex stat, seven. For reflex, Zephyr’s lowest possible roll is an eight, and highest possible roll is a twenty seven. The last resistance type is fortitude, which Zephyr has a two in. If the game master says that Zephyr has just been poisoned, Zephyr would roll a d20 and add two to their roll to resist this challenge to their fortitude.
Along with numbers for stats and skills, your character’s three classes will also come with a variety of other conditional bonuses and physical equipment. For example the ranger gives Zephyr the equipment of a tent, ten meters of rope, a compass, matches, a 2 d4 hunting knife, a water filter, sturdy shoes, bug spray, and sunscreen. The freerunner gives Zephyr an extra reaction per round, and +1 to attack when attacking unarmed. The martial artist gives Zephyr a +2 to attack when attacking unarmed, and Zephyr’s hands now count as 2 d4 bludgeoning weapons. Write these conditional bonuses, equipment, and other details from your three classes on your character sheet.
For the players in my upcoming session, please level up twice. Each level up will increase your feats and your skills. For feats, choose two feats that must be from different classes. We’re leveling up twice, so you should have four feats on your character sheet for this session. For stats, with each level up you can increase the level up stat’s number of skills by one. For example if you have a five in your level up stat, you can increase five stats by one point each time you level up. You can choose different skills the second time you level up if you’d like.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat and skills. For everyone listening, we encourage you to find the No Port Called Home rule book yourself, and play a game with friends. And if you’d like to hear an example adventure, I’m looking forward to playing No Port Called Home in an upcoming session.
Embark on a thrilling journey with Demyan, Nugh, and Maeve in a Dicing with Death adventure! Watch as they cast roles, conquer fate, and spice up the stage to save the play!
Embark on a thrilling journey with Demyan, Nugh, and Maeve in a Dicing with Death adventure! Watch as they cast roles, conquer fate, and spice up the stage to save the play!
Bartholomew, Fennis, and Sadie respond to a request for help from Mishui to investigate an epidemic of memory loss. This episode uses the gameplay mechanics from the system Cascade Effect.
Bartholomew, Fennis, and Sadie respond to a request for help from Mishui to investigate an epidemic of memory loss. This episode uses the gameplay mechanics from the system Cascade Effect.
Marty, Demyan, Tord, and Sadie use the Pirates of the Bone Blade system to rescue a bad boy who might not be so bad.
Marty, Demyan, Tord, and Sadie use the Pirates of the Bone Blade system to rescue a bad boy who might not be so bad.
Bo, Marty, and Sadie use the Ludus: Nightmares Into Reality system to dive through layers of dreamscapes and rescue someone from Bo's forgotten past.
Bo, Marty, and Sadie use the Ludus: Nightmares Into Reality system to dive through layers of dreamscapes and rescue someone from Bo's forgotten past.
How To Play Ludus: Nightmares Into Reality.
Hello! I’m the GM running the game Ludus: nightmares into reality in an upcoming episode of Firebreathing Kittens. This is a brief introduction to the game’s mechanics to help familiarize our players and listeners with the game before we play.
Ludus is a game where the players influence a dream using “twists” and try to turn it into a true nightmare. There is no character sheet, nor weapons nor magic. Technically, it doesn’t even really need a GM. The players are in charge and it’s very improvisation-heavy.
That’s not to say there isn’t a mechanic. There is, but it’s rather tricky to explain so I’ll do my best.
The game starts with the characters establishing a dream. Then, they take turns adding a twist to the dream until they reach 20 twists or they decide they’re done. A twist is basically “yes, and…”-ing. So if the dream is sheep hopping over a fence, a twist would be “the fence has barbs”, then another twist is “the fence starts to grow and the barbs get closer to the sheep”, etc. etc. until the players decide to stop.
This is where the game’s core mechanic comes in. The mechanic to determine whether or not the dream successfully turns into a nightmare is a cursed formula. The best way I can describe it is this: x(y@zD#w). I encourage you to write this down, so I’ll repeat it: x(y@zD#w). Where x = the number of twists; y = the dice to roll based on the number of twists to the dream; z = the number of players; and w = the number of dice values that equal the wild die’s value. @, D, and # are placeholders within the formula and hold no alternative meaning. The equation will be explained further in a second, but with the addition of twists, we get three values to plug into the formula: x (the number of twists), y (the dice to roll based on x), and z (the number of players). The game rules include a table that tells you which dice to use for what number of turns.
So, we have three values. Now we roll the dice, represented by the variable y. This can be anywhere from one to three dice; no matter what, one of the lowest dice Must be designated as the wild die. If the wild die hits its maximum value, then it explodes and you roll another die of the same value. If that die also explodes, you repeat the process until it no longer explodes. For example, if your wild die is a d6 (or your common six-sided die) and you roll a 6, you roll another d6. If that die also rolls a 6, you roll another d6, etc. etc. until you don’t roll a 6.
Next, you sort the dice from lowest face value to highest face value going from left to right. Count the number of dice that have the same face value as the wild die, including the wild die itself. This number is the w variable in our equation which again, is x(y@zD#w). We’ve finally finished writing our equation. Now we have to resolve it.
Starting with the lowest die, count, from left to right, the number of dice equal to our w variable. The die you land on is the number of Rounds you have to do things in the Ballad section (more on that in a bit). Next, starting from the highest die value, count, from right to left, the number of dice equal to the z variable. Add up the face values of the dice you counted. This sum is the Success value.
Now, compare your Success value to the number equal to your x variable. If the Success value is greater than x, the dream is twisted into a true nightmare. If the Success value is less than x, the dream gets weird but resolves as a dream normally would.
After the resolution of the Success value, we move into the Ballad section. This is where the dream fully manifests into a failed or true nightmare. The players go around taking turns describing what happens, again using “yes, and…” to craft the nightmare. This “yes, and…” is known as a verse in the Ballad section, rather than a twist like it was in the dream section. A round is made up of each player contributing one verse, and the entire Ballad section has a number of rounds equal to the w variable. The nightmare should be a full story that resolves at the end of the last round.
And that’s how you play Ludus! In the game I’m running, the players will need to make three true nightmares to succeed in their quest. Before we begin play, though, we’ll also go over player comfort and safety. I don’t want any of our fellow Firebreathing Kittens to feel overly uncomfortable, and this game has the potential for disturbing stuff to arise. We’ll be talking about lines, veils, and x-cards before we play. Lines are firm boundaries: any topic that is a line for a player won’t be brought up, period. Veils are more loose, things that players may feel uncomfortable with but also feel ok exploring. X-cards are for players to use if those veils are explored and they don’t like how it makes them feel. Anything that is x-carded will be treated as
a line and the subject will be dropped. For anyone playing with me, I encourage use of the x-card. You’re the only one who knows your boundaries, so please share them if you are truly discomforted. We’re all friends here.
Well, that should do it! I hope this was a helpful guide to understanding the game of Ludus: nightmares into reality. If you’re interested in playing the game, I hope you listen to the upcoming game. Let us know what you think of it! Thanks for listening. Bye!
Actual play podcasts of the solo play role playing games "You, Beyond The Pale", "Artefact", and "Thousand Year Old Vampire".
Nugh, Ozob, and Colette are hired to use their salvage mechs to brave rock slides, biotitans, and magic scepters to bring back valuable relics and valuable loot on behalf of their employer. We Carry Stuff And Get Paid is an actual play podcast of the Salvage Union RPG system.
Nugh, Ozob, and Colette are hired to use their salvage mechs to brave rock slides, biotitans, and magic scepters to bring back valuable relics and valuable loot on behalf of their employer. We Carry Stuff And Get Paid is an actual play podcast of the Salvage Union RPG system.
Electric Boogaloo is an actual play podcast of Savage Union. Join Crud and Demyan as they mount their mechs and search for artifacts and treasure. Our adventures arrive in Havas Sands after a recent earthquake uncovers a ravine. Can these two with Zahra get to the artifacts before other teams do? Listen to find out!
Electric Boogaloo is an actual play podcast of Savage Union. Join Crud and Demyan as they mount their mechs and search for artifacts and treasure. Our adventures arrive in Havas Sands after a recent earthquake uncovers a ravine. Can these two with Zahra get to the artifacts before other teams do? Listen to find out!
How to play Salvage Union.
Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Salvage Union. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play Salvage Union yourselves.
The sections I’ll talk about are:
- Writing prompt
- How to attack
- Distances
- Actions
- Initiative
- Character creation
- Pushing a mech
- How to salvage
Writing prompt: The general idea of this system is that you and your mech are exploring the wasteland of a ruined civilization. You have friends who also have mechs and are exploring with you, which is good, because you wouldn’t want to be alone, not with all those Bio-Titan behemoth monstrosities that are amalgamations of creatures and machines, roaming the scrap filled battlefields. Can you salvage something useful from this scarred region, creating opportunity from the debris? Let’s find out, in Salvage Union.
How to attack: I will describe the general idea first and then dive into specifics. The general idea is that to attack, first you choose a target you can see who is within weapon range. Next you roll to hit. If you successfully hit, then you inflict your weapon damage. The game master subtracts your weapon’s damage from your target’s either hit points or structure points. Biological things like pilots have hit points, and constructed things like mechs have structure points. Most player characters start at 10 hit points. Most level 1 mechs range between 9 and 17 structure points. Most allied non player characters have 4 four hit points. Tech level 1 weapons deal between 1 and 4 damage per hit. That means that on average it takes as few as three or as many as ten strikes to reduce something that had 10 HP to 0, at which point they fall unconscious and are at the mercy of a mortal blow or not.
Now let’s discuss specifics. Salvage Union uses a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. There are no modifiers or bonuses to add onto the roll. If you get a 1, you fail horribly. You miss the target you’re attacking, you suffer something called a Setback with a capital S, and a severe consequence of the Game Master’s choice happens. Setbacks can affect your health, your reputation, your items, your environment, et cetera. For example with health: you could get hurt, such as taking two HP damage out of your 10 HP total, or roll on the critical injury table, or your module is destroyed. Some examples that affect your reputation are that you could lose an ally, a bounty could be put on your head, you could realize you broke a law and are now cast out of a community. Example setbacks impacting your inventory are that your weapon jams or runs out of ammo, you lose one of your treasured possessions, or your weapon’s effectiveness is now less than it should be. Example environmental setbacks are that your path is blocked by debris, or the town you were heading to got decimated by Bio-Titans before you could get there, or enemies are now flanking you. Those are just some of the potential consequences of rolling a 1 on the d20. If you roll between a 2 and 5, you fail and still face the Setback with a capital S, but without the severe consequence. If you roll between a 6 and a 10 on the dice, then you succeed at what you were trying to do, but you face a tough choice. Your gamemaster will give you a choice between setbacks. If you were attacking, you still hit, but you’re also going to have to make a tough choice. If you roll an 11 to 19 on the dice, you succeed! If you were attacking, you hit your target and deal standard damage. If you weren’t attacking, you achieve your goal without any compromises. And lastly if you roll a twenty on the twenty sided dice, you nailed it. You manage an outstanding success, and may achieve an additional bonus of your choice as well as your intended action. If you were attacking, you can choose to double your damage or do an appropriate bonus effect.
Here is an example of how to attack. You’re approaching a scrap heap, preparing to harvest it in your mech. You reach out your mech’s left hand. Like a pit trap spider, an amalgamation of machine and biology clamps down upon your mech’s left hand! It starts to drag you into its pit! You attack the enemy bio-titan with your mech’s chainsaw arm. You roll a d20 to see if you hit. You roll a 10, so you do succeed and hit, dealing two damage with your chainsaw arm to the pit trap creature-machine, but your game master gives you two Setbacks with a capital S to pick from. Either the module on your left hand was damaged by the bite, and your rigging arm now takes three energy to use instead of its normal two energy, or something unspecified and negative has happened in the town you were heading to. That’s an example of an attack in Salvage Union. You can also roll that d20 to do most skill actions you would do in other roleplaying games, such as convincing an NPC to tell you something, or intimidating an enemy. If you’re interested in sneaking, stealing, and performing similar rogue activities frequently, consider the ranger skill tree, where you auto-succeed at those activities if you take the infiltration advanced move.
Distances: Distances in Salvage Union are: close range, medium, long, and far. Close range is like, you can walk up to it in just a second or two. Medium range is you could throw something and hit it. Long range is you can still see it with your unaided eye, and discern its outline. Far range is outside of the accuracy of most weapons.
Actions: Salvage Union defines lengths of times by using a word and then the word action. A downtime action represents one week. A long action takes about one hour. A short action takes about ten minutes and is too long to be during combat. A turn action is something you could do in a minute or so. Yes, you can do a turn action in combat as your whole turn. One turn action is needed for a mech to start up or shut down. A free action doesn’t take up much time at all. Talking to other characters is a free action. And lastly a re-action is less than ten seconds and is so fast that someone could re-act on someone else’s turn.
Initiative: You and all of your fellow players and allied NPCs act together in what is called a group. The enemy band of five wastelanders that ambushed you also count as one group. This first round, the wastelanders ambushed you, so they go first. One of them takes their action, firing a ranged attack at the players before ducking behind the scrap heap. Then after they’re finished, if you’re still alive, it’s the players’ turn. One player can move and take one action, and as many free actions as you like. Then it’s back to the enemy group, where again one enemy can attack your group. Then it’s back to your group, where one player character can move and perform an action, and as many free actions as they like. It goes back and forth between groups like that. Once everyone has acted, the round is over. At the end of the round, one player character represents everybody and rolls a twenty sided dice. They consult the group iniative table to see what the next round is like. If they roll a 1, well, you’re ambushed again. That means the wastelanders attacked you, then hid, and you don’t know where they went. Imagine an old west movie with a shootout, and you can’t see where they’re coming from. If they roll a 2 to a 5, one NPC of the GM’s choice, probably an enemy, gets one turn in, and then play passes to the player group. If they roll a 6 to a 10, then one NPC chosen by the players acts first. Then the player group can go. On an 11 to 19, one player chosen by the player characters can act first, with play then passing to the enemy NPC group. And lastly if you roll a 20 on the group initiative table, two pilots can act before the enemy group can go.
Character creation: You’re going to be creating three different things in Salvage Union: a pilot, a mech, and a crawler. The pilot is your character. The mech is their vehicle, or steed. The crawler is a slowly moving setting, like a cruise ship.
The pilot starts with their appearance, 10 hit points, 5 ability points, 6 inventory spots, a core class, a starting ability from your core class, two tech 1 pilot equipments, a call sign, a background, a keepsake, and a motto.
Let’s build an example pilot named Sadie. She’s a shy macrotous elf, with big old ears sticking out horizontal from her silver hair. Sadie starts with 10 hit points, 5 ability points, 6 inventory spots, the core class of Hacker, and the starting ability of Well Actually… This lets her ask questions about systems, modules, or technology. When she asks a question, her player rolls a twenty sided dice, also called a d20. On a 20 she can ask 5 questions and get legitimately true answers. From 11-19 she can ask three questions and still be getting truthful answers. From 6-10 she can ask two questions and get one true answer and one false answer. From 2-5 you have to make up an answer to your own question. And on a one, everyone knows you don’t know the answer. She’s got two tech 1 pilot equipments, which are a first aid kit and a portable comms unit. The first aid kit has three uses. It lets Sadie give a target creature in close range 3 hit points as a turn action. The portable comms unit lets Sadie communicate with anything else that has the communicator trait within medium range as a free action. They both take up an inventory spot. Inventory spots are also taken up by weapons, which take up one inventory spot, and scrap, which takes up three inventory spots, so make sure to keep track of how many open inventory spots you have left. Continuing, Sadie gets a call sign of Silver Mouse, which people can call her on their communicator. She gets a background of Corpo Exec, which represents that she comes from being at the top of its hierarchy, and that something caused her to stray away from the luxurious life it gave her. Her keepsake is one of her mother’s earrings. She’s looking for the other one. And her motto is: be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. You can spend your five ability points on anything you want, have fun browsing through the things that cost AP. There seem to be a wide variety of ways to customize your pilot. Advanced and Legendary abilities can be unlocked at high levels. For my players in my upcoming game, I recommend choosing one of the character paths or mech builds that gives you access to the salvaging trait, so that you can participate in salvaging, see page 248.
Second, you’re going to be building a mech. Your mech starts with 20 tech 1 scrap. You can spend this scrap to pick your chassis, which will come with its own stats and ability. You can also spend this scrap to pick your tech 1 systems and modules. Also choose your mech’s quirk, appearance, and pattern name.
Let’s build an example mech. Sadie’s mech starts with 20 tech 1 scrap, which you use as currency to buy the mech based on its salvage value, which is like its cost. The symbol for salvage value is a gear, so if you see a 10 inside a gear with a lot of teeth, that’s a salvage value of 10. Sadie spends 10 tech 1 scrap buying the 10 salvage value chassis model called the spectrum. That’s half her scrap, so she writes down that she has 10 remaining to spend on systems and modules. Systems and modules include things like weapons and salvaging tools, so you might not want to spend all your salvage value on the chassis alone. The spectrum chassis has a bunch of stats, so she writes those down, too. The spectrum comes with 17 structure points, 11 energy points, 3 heat cap, 7 system slots, 4 module slots, 6 cargo capacity, tech level 1, 10 salvage value, those all go on the mech’s character sheet. The symbol for systems and modules is a triangle, so if you see a 1 inside a triangle that means it takes up one module slot. From this example, this mech had a maximum of four module slots. Energy points are something you run out of, and heat cap is something you don’t want to build up to, or your mech can overheat. The mech also comes with an ability, which for this example is called Data Scanner. This ability lets you spend two energy points to scan a single object in close range. It can be a mech, system, module, vehicle, creature, artefact, structure, fauna, flora, anything. You can ask two questions about the object and the answers given must be true. You also now have its blueprint if it was an intact mech chassis, system, or module. This is a neat combo with Sadie’s other ability. She’s going to get so many rewards for asking questions during the game. Maybe having all these good possible outcomes will motivate her to overcome her shyness, speak up, and ask a question. If she can just overcome her fear of new people enough to ask a question, so many good things will happen. It’s neat when mechanics encourage roleplaying. Next she pick a quirk for her mech, for example the cockpit has far, far too many buttons. And an appearance, which is that it has spiky bits, the better for extending to probe objects it’s investigating. Lastly, she gives it a pattern name: Tickle Monster. And voila! Sadie has a mech. For my players in my upcoming game, I encourage you to take a look at the rigging arm on page 167 so that you’ll be able to participate in rigging salvage action, see page 249. Triangles are how many system or module spots you need open to take it, the T number is the tech level, and the number inside the gear is the salvage value.
Lastly, the party is going to be sharing a crawler. Someone, possibly the Game Master, will pick a crawler type, writing down its ability, stats, bonuses, structure points, upkeep, and upgrade cost. Choose a tech 1 weapons system for your crawler, and give it a name and tag number. Name the crawler’s NPCs and give them each their own background, keepsake, motto, and 4 HP each. You Game Master might hand everyone a page with their crawler information on it before the game starts. If you’re a player in my upcoming Salvage Union game, that’s what I’m going to do, so you don’t have to build the crawler yourself. But since this is an example of how to play Salvage Union, let’s build an example crawler together.
A crawler is basically a roaming settlement. Imagine a tour bus with all the members of a band on it, or a cruise ship, or a generational space flight. In this example, we’re building a trade caravan crawler, so imagine a series of covered wagons rolling out from Saint Louis to head to California back in the eighteen hundreds. This crawler has an ability: improved trading bay. When you begin to roll for what is available in the trading bay, use an improved table instead of the one generally available to most players. It also comes with an NPC who is an experienced trader. For example Khairul Smith is on board and they’re really good at getting deals on boats. They’ve got a keepsake of cool person hair gel, and a motto of “success is the best revenge”. By being present, Khairul Smith reduces the cost of any mech chassis, system, or module available in the improved trading bay by one scrap, with a minimum cost of one. And they have 4 HP, so if you let them die you lose that bonus to your trades. Righto, we’re done with character creation. We’ve created a pilot, we’ve created a mech, and we’ve explained how to build a crawler, which I imagine might be done by your game master.
Pushing a mech: You can push your mech to add two heat to it and re roll a d20 dice. First, resolve all the effects of the re-roll. Then add two to the mech’s heat and roll a heat check d20 dice. If your mech has less heat than the number you roll on the dice, it’s fine. If your heat is equal to or greater than your roll, then your reactor has overloaded. Roll on the reactor overload table. Your mech might shut down, blow a module, or explode and be completely destroyed. That’s no good. To reduce how much heat you have, shut it down and let it cool off for one hour. After the hour, heat resets to zero. While it’s shut off, it’s vulnerable and takes twice as much damage from attacks.
Here is an example of pushing. A behemoth bio-titan dragged one of the party members back to its lair and has spun it up in a silk cocoon to eat later. The bio-titan is currently sleeping its physical damage off in one corner of the lair. You are trying to sneak your way into the lair to rescue your friend unnoticed. You roll a d20 to make a stealth check. The d20 lands on a 4, which means you fail and are about to experience a Setback with a capital S. Based upon the roleplaying situation, you are guessing that the GM is going to do an environmental Setback, where the behemoth bio-titan wakes up. But you know you’re not match for that machine-creature. That’s what you told your friend earlier, the one who’s now in a cocoon. Even though your mech only has a heat capacity of three and pushing would add two, you think this is worth it, and you push your mech. First, you re-roll that d20 dice. Success! A 15! You succeed at what you were trying to do, which was to sneak up to that cocoon without waking the behemoth up. You achieve your goal without any compromises. Now that we have resolved the effects of the re-roll, we add two to the mech’s heat and we roll a heat check. You’re haven’t reached your mech’s heat capacity of three, so that’s good. If you had, you would have to make a heat check every turn you start at your heat capacity. But you’re not there yet, so it’s just one heat check for having pushed and re-rolled the dice. You roll for the heat check and consult the table on page 235. You get a 12, and see that from an 11 to 19, your mech reactor has overheated. Subtract two, the number of heat you currently have, from your structure points, which are like hit points for mechs. The mech shuts down and gains the vulnerable trait, where it takes double damage from any attack. It will re-activate at the end of your next turn, and won’t decrease how much heat it has until you shut it down and let it cool off for one hour. But in this example, pushing the mech was worth it. You’re at the cocoon with your friend and can beging to cut them free, the bio-titan behemoth none the wiser.
How to salvage: Players who posses the salvaging or rigging traits can area salvage, mech salvage, scrap, repair, patch up, load, mount, and craft. If that includes you, it’s not a bad idea to print out or screen capture pages 248 and 249, which lists your salvaging moves. There are five types of item you can find in the wasteland that can be useful to you. Chassis are the core frame of the mech, the part that has all the stats. For example a jackhammer, mule, and kraken are three chassis good at mining, carrying cargo, and swimming, respectively. Systems are hardware that can be mounted on a chassis, such as excavator arms and weapons. Modules are software that you can upgrade your chassis with, like a better sound system or faster RAM. A vehicle is something like a carriage or a wagon that isn’t quite a mech. And lastly, scrap is that very last working part pulled from an otherwise completely broken junk heap, a component that might be useful for crafting something one day. The wasteland leaves objects in a range of conditions, ranging from intact, to damaged, to destroyed. To salvage an area, roll to area salvage and if you’re successful, reduce the supply of that area by one. Most areas default start at five supply. Chassis, systems and modules take up as many cargo spots as their salvage value number. Each piece of scrap you harvest takes up one mech cargo spot, or three pilot inventory spots.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat a bit. And for everyone listening, hopefully now you’re excited to find the Salvage Union rule book yourself, and play a game with friends. I’m looking forward to playing Salvage Union in an upcoming adventure.
A precious familiar is missing from Camp Fable and it's up to the Firebreathing Kittens to find it! Join Arby, Bill, and Mary as they search for Puff and unlock the true power of friendship in this Witch Scouts actual play.
A precious familiar is missing from Camp Fable and it's up to the Firebreathing Kittens to find it! Join Arby, Bill, and Mary as they search for Puff and unlock the true power of friendship in this Witch Scouts actual play.
When did this old parchment arrive on the jobs board? Join Armando, Sadie, and Bartholomew as they investigate. Be A Doll is an Adventurous actual play podcast.
When did this old parchment arrive on the jobs board? Join Armando, Sadie, and Bartholomew as they investigate. Be A Doll is an Adventurous actual play podcast.
Hello listeners!
This is a short episode of firebreathing kittens where I am going to quickly describe the rules of the TTRPG Adventurous. You can find Adventurous that is spelled A-d-v-e-n-t-u-r-o-u-s by Dawnfist games on drivethrurpg.com.
I will be going over the Core Mechanics
Aiding other players
How to roll for initiative
Actions and Movement
Attacking and Defending
How to sneak
Injuries and Death
The Core Mechanic:
In Adventurous the core mechanic is attributes which range from 1 to 5. Your primary attributes are:
Strength: Physical strength, Dexterity: Nimbleness and agility, Willpower: Mental strength and composure, Knowledge: Accumulated Knowledge of the world, and Charisma: or your force of personality. When forced to attempt something risky, challenging, or dangerous you make a check based on an attribute and roll that number of dice. A single 5 or 6 is a weak success. More than one 5 or 6 is a strong success. No 5's or 6's rolled is a failure, although you receive 1 exp.
For example: Mindy wants to try and hit a very menacing goose with a baseball bat so she makes a strength check, her strength is 4. Mindy rolls: 5, 6, 3 and 3. A strong success! We will explain damage later.
This type of check is the core mechanic of the game. Rolling double 6's for some abilities grant special effects so keep that in mind and results in gaining 1 exp and the party gains momentum.
Advantage and Disadvantage: Advantage and Disadvantage may apply due to environment, abilities, or perhaps the assistance of other players. Advantage grants you an extra 1d6 on a test to a max of 6d6, and disadvantage reduces your dicepool by 1d6 to a minimum of 1d6.
Momentum is a binary party wide resource, the group simply has momentum or does not have momentum. It may be used to fuel certain abilities and may also be used to grant the reroll of a single die in a check.
Influencing NPC's: You can influence NPC's by making a Charisma test, often this might be made easier by offering or negotiating with NPC's. Whether a weak success or strong success is required to influence an NPC is ultimately up to the GM.
Aiding other players:
There are a few ways to assist other players for example you can, encourage them to use any available momentum, assist them and grant them advantage, and finally in the unfortunate situation that they begin to bleed out you may make a Knowledge test and mark supply in order to stabilize them and save them from an untimely demise.
Initiative:
In Adventurous, turn order is determined by rolling initiative by making a Knowledge test. All PC's that succeed go before the opponent. Those who fail go after the opponent. Initiative is re-rolled at the beginning of each round.
Actions and Movement:
Each turn a creature gets to make a move and an action
Examples of an action: attacking, using an ability, or drinking a potion.
In Adventurous distance is measured in zones, the zones are: Close, Near, Far, and Distant in that order.
A creature may move one band and make an action or move two bands and take no action on its turn
An example: An angry goose wants to get in melee range with Mindy. It is Distant from her, so it will move twice. It moves from distant, to far, and ends its turn near her. It is unable to act because it moved twice.
Attacking and Defending:
Melee attacks are made with Strength tests, and ranged attacks use Dexterity tests. Damage for weapons and abilities is described such as W2/S4 this stands for Weak 2/Strong 4.
When an attack is made: On a weak success the weak damage is inflicted on an opponent. On a strong Success the strong damage is inflicted. If it is a failure your character misses and nothing happens.
When a Player is defending: Strength is used to defend against melee attacks, Dexterity is used to defend against ranged attacks, and will is used against magic attacks.
If the defensive test is a weak success: the Player takes the enemies weak damage to its HP.
On a strong success: The player avoids all damage
On a Failure: The player takes the enemies strong damage to its HP.
Armor in this game is a value from 1-3 that subtracts from the damage a creature receives. However damage can only be reduced to 1 HP, never to zero.
Massive Damage: Certain situations such as a sneak attack might grant a player's attack Massive Damage. Massive Damage doubles the damage dice of the weapon attack so a W4/S8 damage sword would instead deal W8/S16 damage.
Sneaking:
In order to sneak a PC makes a Dexterity test. It is up to the GM to decide if a strong or weak success is needed to succeed in sneaking.
Sneak Attacks: Attacking a creature from stealth that is not engaged in combat may inflict massive damage, this may only be done with a one handed weapon.
Massive damage doubles the weak or strong damage of the weapon based on the result of the attack. Example: W4/S8 becomes W8/S16
Injuries and Death:
When a PC is reduced to 0 HP it becomes wounded and rolls on the Injury chart using a 1d6: on a 1-2 the character dies a terrible death, 3-4 you are knocked unconscious for one hour and are bleeding out, 5-6 you are knocked down and are bleeding out.
Bleeding out: A PC that is bleeding out must roll a 1d6 each turn, on a 5-6 they survive another turn. On a 1-4 they die immediately. Bleeding can be stopped through magical healing or by performing a knowledge test to stop the bleeding through first aid and mark supply.
Alternatives to death: Adventurous does not really pull any punches when it comes to lethality in adventuring. The chances of dying seem pretty high if you drop to 0 hit points since you have about a 33% chance of rolling a 1-2 on the injury table and you need a 5-6 each turn that you are bleeding out to keep from dying. So its good to have this in mind and perhaps find away discuss this with your players before playing. Some people do not find character death to be a fun experience.
Thank you for listening to my Rule summary for the RPG Adventurous by Dawnfist games! Check it out at Drivethrurpg.com!
Armando takes up a quest to find a mysterious book, recruiting Sadie and Zidane for it, inadvertently finding a relic of Zidane's past. Family Heirloom is an actual play podcast of Fantasy World.
Armando takes up a quest to find a mysterious book, recruiting Sadie and Zidane for it, inadvertently finding a relic of Zidane's past. Family Heirloom is an actual play podcast of Fantasy World.
How to Play Fantasy World
Fantasy World is a powered by the apocalypse fantasy RPG with magic and heroic fighting. It's billed as "dramatic fantasy," which means it's about becoming heroes in a fantasy setting, and making ourselves care about their story.
Like all good PBTA games, Fantasy World has some core principles that guide how we play. First, there is a One Golden Rule, which is that if anyone at the table thinks "this seems wrong, I don't like it," they can and should say so, and only one unhappy voice is a veto. It's like an X-card built into the rules of the game.
The world itself has some core things that are true: Magic is Real. The Gods are Silent. Cities are Rare. Travel is Perilous.
Finally, the game master, called The World, has three items in their an agenda: Play to Find Out, Make Sense, and Rock the Boat. Play to Find Out means there is never a railroad in the game. Instead, we have a setting full of interesting people and ideas and things happening, but those may be discarded at any point when the players go in a different direction.
Make Sense means that all of those interesting people and ideas need to make sense in order to feel like a reasonable world in which the adventurers live.
Finally, the adventurers' lives are interesting and exciting, and we accomplish that by Rocking the Boat. NPCs will act in their own self interests, and how that interacts with the adventurers is what creates an interesting story.
Basic Dice Mechanics:
The basic dice mechanics of a PBTA game are that you and your friends describe yourselves doing stuff, and the GM representing the World reacts to your actions appropriated. When you get to the point where you trigger a move, you roll two 6-sided dice and usually add a stat modifier.
If you roll a 10 or higher, you succeed at what you were doing, and the move may tell you what happens.
If you roll a 7 to 9, you succeed at a cost. Usually, the move tells you what the cost is-- it might be implied in the move, or it might be something really specific. For example, the Sway move says that when used on an NPC, on a 10, you get a YES, and on a 7-9, you learn what would get a yes.
If you roll a 6 or less, the World has what's called a "World Reaction." A World Reaction is like a move that the World does-- in other games it's called a GM Move, or a reaction. The World never rolls dice. When the World makes a Reaction, it's certain and automatically succeeds. A typical reaction might be to reveal an unwelcome truth, or put the characters at a disadvantage. It's important to know that a 6 or less isn't failure. Whatever you were trying to do might happen-- the World is free to describe it happening, in a way that you didn't expect and probably don't want.
In addition, when you roll a 6, you gain an expedience point. So, during the play session itself, every time you roll a 6 or less, you gain one of those epedience points.
Character Creation and the Fellowship
Characters are drawn from the playbooks, which are downloadable from fantasyworldrpg.com. There are ten playbooks, which are basic archetypes. For purposes of the Firebreathing Kittens' session, the characters are assumed to have a couple of sessions, but have not yet earned a full advancement. As a result, they start with a basic playbook and 10 expedience points. Expedience Points can be used to buy growth points, or can be spent during the session to gain advantage or use more than one utility move during a long rest.
When you create a character in fantasy world, you download their playbook and then make a few choices about the character. For example, the Knight needs to state what chivalric order they belong to, who they are sworn to serve, and what their core value is that gives them some power.
The second page of each playbook has their growth moves, which add special moves to the character as they advance.
The Fellowship is a special way to frame the story in Fantasy World. There are four Fellowship types: Shields, who protect a local area, Knives who pursue personal wealth, Hearts who are on a single quest, and Coins, who go where the job takes them. For the Firebreathing Kittens episode, the Fellowship is the Coins, as they are a group of troubleshooters and problem-solvers for hire.
Further Reading:
If you'd like to play Fantasy World, and you have someone who will be running the game, read the Fundamental Knowledge and Essential Mechanics section of the rules, and then read the playbooks and Game Moves to pick your character and understand what will trigger a move in the game. Remember, anything that isn't a move can still happen, it just doesn't trigger a dice roll.
Join Demyan, Nugh, and Mary as they try to fix a ferry and a crabby situation! Can they thwart the imitation crabs before it's too late? Find out in this Everything's Going to Crab actual play episode!
Join Demyan, Nugh, and Mary as they try to fix a ferry and a crabby situation! Can they thwart the imitation crabs before it's too late? Find out in this Everything's Going to Crab actual play episode!
Join Bart, Reg, and Crud as they crab walk their way around an island to save people from an impending tsunami! You Are What You Eat is an actual play podcast of Everything's Going to Crab!
Join Bart, Reg, and Crud as they crab walk their way around an island to save people from an impending tsunami! You Are What You Eat is an actual play podcast of Everything's Going to Crab!
How to play Everything’s Going To Crab.
Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Everything Is Going To Crab. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play Everything Is Going To Crab yourselves.
The sections I’ll talk about are:
- Writing prompt
- Character creation
- How to use skills
- How to attack
Writing prompt: The general idea of this system is that you start in your normal forms and must turn into a crab if you want to survive a giant wave that will hit your town in 24 hours. If you can convince a Non Player Character (NPC) that they need to become a crab, too, then they’ll head to the beach and do their best, and will also survive. The more NPCs you can save, the better. How good are you at convincing people of something they don’t want to believe? This games finds out.
Character creation: There are three categories of traits: eyes, hands, and feet. Each has analogies in your starting and crab forms. Eyes in your starting form, versus crab eyes stalks. Hands in your starting form, versus crab pincers. Feet in your starting form, versus crab legs. Eyes are used for guessing at how much someone believes you that they need to turn into a crab, or reading a book or a town sign. Crab eyestalks are good at seeing through disguises and spotting hidden predators. Hands are used for repairing broken items and high fiving someone, while crab pincers are good at holding on to someone against the might of the sea or snipping something small. Feet are used for driving a car, walking in high heels, and sneaking, while crab legs are good at climbing up rock walls and for scampering at speed. To create your character, put 100 percentage points each into these three categories. Split the percentage points between your current and crab form. The maximum you can start with is 79 percent crab during character creation. Please start with fewer than 80 on the crab side so you don’t have to explain why you look like a crab at the start of the game.
Here is an example. Yolanda puts 70 percent into eyes, and 30 percent into crab eye stalks. She puts 60 percent into hands, and 40 percent into crab pincers. Lastly, she puts 75 percent into feet and 25 percent into crab legs. Yes, you can start with 100 percent in the starting form traits.
How to use skills: Rolling lower than your trait means you succeed in what you try to do. If Jerome wants to spot a hidden lever, he’d roll a d100 and try to roll lower than his crab eyestalks, which are good at spotting things, like hidden levers. With 50 percentage points in eyestalks, a 40 would succeed and a 90 would fail.
As you play, your points will change. After every roll, you can change your ratio from starting body to crab body in one category. 80% will trigger a metamorphoses into that type of form for one limb, 100% will metamorph both limbs. At the end of the game you need to have 80% in all three crab traits to survive the giant wave.
For example, Jerome just finished rolling to spot a hidden lever. Because he rolled, he can choose to adjust the percentage points. He’d previously had 50 points in eyestalks. With the end of the game and the giant wave approaching, Jerome decides to bump his eyes up to 80%, triggering a form change and he describes how one eye pops out into a crab eyestalk. Because he’s above 80 in all traits now, he will survive the giant wave. If he wants both eyes to be eye stalks, he could change his number to 100%.
How to attack: The wave wasn’t just a naturally occurring event, but a planned apocalypse designed to wipe the town off the face of the earth. Some of the townspeople are imposters, and are secretly crabs. You might find yourself in combat with them. Combat rolls are opposed checks. The enemy has between 40 and 70% in each trait. If both you and your enemy succeed your roll, then the person who rolled closer to their trait’s number wins. Players win ties.
Here is an example. JimBob the harbormaster is secretly a crab. You want to spread a rumor about him so that everyone in the town believes the coming wave is JimBob’s fault. Seeing through lies is a starting form eyes trait, so you have to roll a d100 and try to get below your starting form eyes percentage. JimBob still looks human at this point, so he has to roll under a 70 to succeed. He rolls a 20, which is 50 points under, and passes his roll. You’ve been slowly turning into a crab this whole time, and your eyes are mostly eye stalks at this point. You’ve only got 20 point in eyes; it’s 80% eyestalk. You cross your fingers and roll your dice, and you get a 15. That’s a success. It’s five points below its trait number. Both opposed checks succeed, so the one that is closer to its trait number wins. Because you rolled five points below your trait number and JimBob the harbormaster rolled fifty, you are closer, and your rumor is successful. The two NPCs, JimBob’s harbor attendant employees, who had been listening to JimBob’s advice to stay in town, believe your rumor and skedaddle on a boat, escaping the wave.
Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat a bit. And for everyone listening, hopefully now you’re excited to find the Everything Is Going To Crab rule book yourself, and play a game with friends. I’m looking forward to playing Everything Is Going To Crab in an upcoming adventure.
Dimension hopping, bloody trees, and seducing fire giants? Listen at your own risk! Join Arby, Guvo, and Sadie in the episode Puzzling Portals featuring the one-page RPG Sexy Battle Wizards!
Dimension hopping, bloody trees, and seducing fire giants? Listen at your own risk! Join Arby, Guvo, and Sadie in the episode Puzzling Portals featuring the one-page RPG Sexy Battle Wizards!
What can a memory hold? The joy of an old friend? The fear of a nightmare? Perhaps something even more. Join Sadie, Bartholomew, and Armando as they find out! Gifts Of The Past is an actual play of the Mall Zombies TTRPG.
What can a memory hold? The joy of an old friend? The fear of a nightmare? Perhaps something even more. Join Sadie, Bartholomew, and Armando as they find out! Gifts Of The Past is an actual play of the Mall Zombies TTRPG.
Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Mall Zombies by W.H Arthur. In this episode, I’ll share my thoughts after reading the rule book. Hopefully this episode will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play Mall Zombies yourselves.
Set up
- Get a deck of cards, preferable a zombie themed deck for that extra narrative spark
- Separate the cards into three piles, all of the number cards, the court cards (aka, j, q k), and the two jokers.
- We now shuffle the number cards together and create 7 face down piles of 3 cards by drawing from this deck.
- Once we have these 7 face down piles, we turn over the top card in each pile.
- Each pile should now have 1 faceup card and two face down cards underneath.
- We’ve just created our shops for the players to scavenge from.
- The top card number tells us what the Prompt is for that shop. This is a list of names given in the rules. Such as, Wisdom, Luxury, Power, etc. You can come up with the rest of the name of the shop yourself. If one of the piles has 6 as the top visible card the Prompt indicates it is an Eletrical store, so we could call it, Roberts Bits and Bobs. So we know what type of items might be in that store. (We will go into what our players want later on).
- We take the remaining cards we didn’t draw and shuffle the two jokers into it that pile to create the “main deck”. The players will be drawing from this Main deck during the game when scavenging through the shops.
- The court cards are shuffled and set aside as the Zombie Deck. We draw from this deck when the players are attacked by the zombies.
- This completes the set up!
Before we go on, let’s discuss what our players are looking for during the game.
- The group first discuss what things the colony needs to survive. (e.g. food, batteries, heating, clothes, medicine, entertainment).
- Once they have decided on 5 needs this will be the basis for your players to focus on what they are scavenging for. So lets look now at how to scavenge the mall!
Scavenging examples
- During the game the players will be scavenging for supplies by looking through the shops. Mechanically this is by searching through the piles of cards one after another.
- Example. Rosie, a widowed survivor of the colony has spotted Roberts Bits and Bobs and decides to scavenge through the shop to find some useful tools for the colony.
- Rosie describes how she would find her husband, Barry in the shop every time they went to the mall together thumbing through the bargain bins looking for a great deal on hammers. It would annoy her at the time, but now it just makes her miss him even more.
- The more narrative detail the better in this game, encourage your players to really go ham in their descriptions taking as long as they want.
- The GM now turns over the related pile of cards with the number 6 on and shows the group what they have found with their initial scavenge.
- The cards turned over now read the following. 6 hearts, 6 of spades, and 10 of spades.
- So, what are we looking for here?
- The players are trying to find one of three outcomes related to a poker hand. This being a “three of a kind”, aka 3x3, or 3, 10’s, etc. A straight flush, aka, 123 of hearts. If this outcome is reached the players “You find more than what you need. Describe how the item fulfils one of the needs, and how it's better than what you expected.” Or, a Straight or flush, this is 123, in any suit or 3 cards all hearts, spades, etc. If they get this outcome, “You find what you need. Describe how the item fulfils one of the needs.” and lastly, a pair, aka, 2x2’s or 2,10s, etc. If this is the outcome, “You find something, but it is either defective or of an inferior quality. Elaborate on the details.”
- If none of these outcomes happen, they find nothing of use, aka, it doesn’t match any of the groups needs for the colony.
Push your luck
- Now, what happens if the first three cards don’t give them what they want? Well, they can push their luck and draw from the main deck, (the ones with now jokes, aka zombies in..oooooo).
- Rosie draws “6 hearts, 6 of spades, and 10 of spades” That’s two spades, with is close to a flush, and two 6’s which is close to a three of kind.
- Rosie decides to draw from the main deck and “pushes her luck”.
- When a player pushes their luck, they must describe what they’re doing to do this. e.g. breaking down a locked door, removing rubble from a blocked corridor, etc).
Rosie breaks through the employees only door at the back of the shop. - The GM draws this card from the main deck and adds it to the pile. It’s a 6 of clubs.
- This gives Rosie 3, 6’s and a three of a kind. This means “You find more than what you need. Describe how the item fulfils one of the needs, and how it's better than what you expected”.
- Rosie describes finding a pile of brand-new tools from saws, hammers, and hand drills, perfect for fixing and building a better shelter for the colony.
- These cards are not placed back into the main deck once an area has been scavenged, they stay out in their respective shop piles.
Zombies!
- What if Rosie drew a Joker card from the main deck. Well, this is where the brutality of the game comes into play.
- Rosie draws a Joker and the GM indicates she stumbled into a zombie attack!
- The gm draws a card from the “zombie deck” aka the deck of court cards and tells Rosie what she is facing.
- J : You survive by fighting or escaping from the zombies. How did you do it?
- Q : You are attacked by an infected survivor (an NPC). Tell us whether you noticed their strange behaviours recently. You are dead.
- K: You are attacked by a swarm of zombies. Tell us how you die.
- The zombie deck is reshuffled afterwards with the court card being placed back, and the joker is then shuffled back into the main deck.
So how can you mitigate these effects? To have a little more sway or edge over the randomness of the decks?
Character creation:
- Creating a character is very simple, each player takes control of a survivor in the zombie apocalypse giving their name, pronouns, and choosing one “special ability”.
- These special abilities give the players tools to look through the main deck before drawing from it.
- Careful : Look at the top card of the main deck in secret. You may put it at the bottom of the deck.
- Daring : Look at the top two cards of the main deck in secret. You may shuffle the deck.
- Wise : Look at the top three cards of the main deck in secret. You may put them back in any order.
Scavenging with Special abilities.
- Let’s now rewind time and figure out how Rosie could have mitigated the zombie attack!
- Rosie has the ability “wise” which means, Look at the top three cards of the main deck in secret. You may put them back in any order.”
- She enters Robers bits and bobs, does her description, looks at the cards, “6 hearts, 6 of spades, and 10 of spades”.
- She can now use her special ability to look at the top three cards of the main deck in secret. She draws three cards in order, Joker, 6 clubs, 8 spades.
- It’s a good thing she checked as she would have drawn a joker. She now puts them back in this order, joker, 8 spades, 6 clubs. So, the next card drawn will be the 6 of clubs.
Escaping
- Once the PCs have found all they need, it is time to leave the mall.
- Or, if they are dying out too quickly, it’s time to escape and take what they can with them.
- Of the remaining surviving characters, a leader is chosen from them who will be drawing from a new set of cards created by the gm.
- The leader and push their luck as normal and if a joker is revealed standard zombie attack rules proceed.
- Three of a kind / Straight Flush : All remaining PCs escape. Describe how the group outsmart the zombie horde.
- Straight / Flush : One PC sacrifices themselves to allow the others to escape. Narrate their sacrifice.
- Pair (Only works if you have 1+ remaining PC): The leader can choose a single PC to escape. Describe what happens. (The remaining PCs can find an alternative exit by drawing a new set of three cards.)
- None of the above: You cannot escape.
The ending
- If the scavenged supplies fulfil all of your needs (with less than half of them defective), and at least one PC is alive. : Your colony thrives. Describe how the living condition improves.
- If the scavenged supplies fulfil only some of your needs, and at least one PC is alive: Your colony survives. Describe how the colony aces setbacks from the unfulfilled needs.
- If all PCs are dead: Decide as a group if the scavenged supplies reach back to the colony. If so, apply the above ending that fits. If not, apply the ending below.
- If you fail to scavenge any items: Your colony collapses. Is there anything left?
and epilogues
surviving players now describe what happened after in the colony, and dead players can describe their after life as a zombie.
Get this game for “pay what you want” on drivethru RPG.
We discuss our thoughts about the rules for the tabletop roleplaying games we played in the past few weeks: Resolute 2e, Root Quick Start, Christmas Capers, The Witch Is Dead, Adventure Dice, LURPS, Desperado Quickdraw Edition, Dicing With Death, and New Edo.
Zidane, now slightly seasoned, leads newcomers Nugh and Sadie through an alternate version of Niqamui to save reality. Rolls off the Tongue is an actual play podcast of the system "New Edo".
Zidane, now slightly seasoned, leads newcomers Nugh and Sadie through an alternate version of Niqamui to save reality. Rolls off the Tongue is an actual play podcast of the system "New Edo".
There Can Be Only One is an actual play podcast using the New Edo system. Legends and Godhood are born within Arby, and a Highlander style clash unfolds as Guvo faces his alternate self in New Niqamui.
There Can Be Only One is an actual play podcast using the New Edo system. Legends and Godhood are born within Arby, and a Highlander style clash unfolds as Guvo faces his alternate self in New Niqamui.
How To Play New Edo, a tabletop roleplaying game.
Transcript: Hello! I'm the GM for an upcoming episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I'll be running using the gameplay mechanics from a game called NewEdo, a Neon Samurai role-playing game. This is a rules discussion episode meant to help teach my players and any listeners the basic mechanics of NewEdo so it's easier to begin playing. I'll be going over two main topics. The first topic is character creation, where I'll discuss Paths, Lineages, and the Priority Buy System, that’s B-U-Y buy, with its five associated Priority Abilities. I’ll explain starting equipment and cash at the end of this topic. The second topic is gameplay mechanics. Since NewEdo is a 300 page rulebook, I won't have time to go over every single mechanic, but I will go over mechanics that pertain to some of the characters playing in my upcoming episode, as well as common mechanics used in most TRPGs. I'll also discuss Legend and Fate, two important mechanics that are exclusive to NewEdo.
With that said, I'll begin discussing character creation, starting with Paths and Lineages.
Paths
A Path is similar to a class, but instead of defining your character's archetype going forward, it sets up your character's purpose with some starting features and equipment, allowing you to build yourself however you want. You can decide which Path best suits you and what it provides starting on page 72.
Lineages
A Lineage is what would be considered a race in other TRPGs. With the exception of Hisanaka, you have unrestricted access to all Lineages, each with two Cultures to choose from, providing unique gameplay differences. Hisanaka is a special Lineage only available with a Priority A Ranking in Augmentations, and has no special Culture. Lineages are found starting on page 132.
The Priority Buy System
After deciding your Path and Lineage, you need to decide what order you prioritize your Priority Abilities. You have five Priority Abilities to consider:
● Backgrounds
● Magic
● Augmentations
● Skills
● and Core Traits
You must assign Ranks A through E (highest to lowest) between these five Priority Abilities in order to determine your character building resources. Refer to the Priority Buy Resource Allocation Table on page 58 to know what you get at each Rank.
Backgrounds
Backgrounds are associated with your character's backstory and grant certain benefits. There are five Backgrounds you can invest points into:
● Contacts
● Followers
● Soul
● Status
● and Wealth
You can study up on what each Background provides at each Rank starting on page 144. Refer to the Background Score to Rank table on the same page to know how many points are needed to increase your Rank. All Backgrounds begin with 1 point each, and no Background may be higher than 61 at character creation.
Magic
Depending on your Path, Lineage, and Priority Rank, you can gain access to Magic. If you’re looking for a Path with access to multiple spells, called Rotes in this system, choose Shugonshi. If you just need a single Rote, such as an attack or heal, look through TIer Zero through Three for an appropriate Rote, then choose D through A for a Magic Priority Rank that gives you access to the Rote you chose. Keep in mind the Casting Skill associated with each Rote, as you need to roll that Skill plus Shinpi Rank to cast.
When you gain access to Magic through methods mentioned earlier, you should receive a bonus amount of Shinpi. Shinpi is a special Core Trait that, unlike other Core Traits, begins at zero instead of ten. You’ll need to raise your Shinpi Rank through bonuses mentioned previously and Trait points received from Priority Buy in order to cast Magic effectively.
If you happen to choose the Shugonshi Path, Awakened Kitsune Lineage, or Priority A Magic, you gain access to a Mikata Kami. You can choose any Kami you have access to and gain the associated Mikata Kami bonus. A Mikata Kami is also a pet with its own character sheet. For more details, read pg. 268 through 274.
Augmentations
Each Augmentation, or Aug, has a Noise Rating and Biofeedback Percentage. The points from the Priority Buy System are spent on the combined Noise Ratings of each Aug you get. If you increase an Aug’s Rank, you multiply the Noise cost by the Aug’s Rank. You need to have enough Core Trait points to install any Augs. If the combined Noise of a single Trait from all Augs exceeds the associated Trait, you can’t install anymore with that Trait.
For any leftover points, you can spend four points for a permanent 1d4 bonus to any Skill. This doesn’t count as a Skill Rank; rather it’s an external bonus to those Skill rolls. Any other leftover points may be added to the Wealth Background one for one.
Biofeedback Percentage is added to the Fate Card for each Aug you gain. Keep in mind the percentage does not multiply with each Aug Rank. So if you install a Rank 5 Aug with 1% Biofeedback, it’s still 1%.
Skills
The list of Skills starts on pg. 191. You have a certain amount of dice to spend on Skills called Focus. You’re limited to three Focus per Skill at character creation. Each Focus you put into a Skill increases that Skill’s Rank, which may grant a bonus. Bonuses can be found under each Skill’s description.
Traits
There are seven Core Traits to choose from:
● Heart
● Power
● Reflex
● Presence
● Perception
● Savvy
● and Shinpi
Each of them, except Shinpi, begin with ten points. Shinpi begins with zero. For every ten points in a Trait, you gain a d10 to all associated checks. You can only invest up to 15 points in any Trait, though bonuses from things like Lineage and Backgrounds don’t count towards this limit. At the end of character creation, your highest Trait becomes your starting Legend Score. There are also four Derived Traits that are affected by the previously mentioned Core Traits:
● Resolve
● Move
● Initiative
● and Defence
Starting Equipment and Cash
You gain basic starting equipment from your Path. The Path descriptions each include a note on starting equipment, and all of them grant at least one weapon. That weapon, and any other items, will be described only by its Quality rating. You can look up item qualities on the tables in Chapter 13 starting on pg. 233. In addition, you start with cash equal to a Wealth roll, 1d10 per Rank in the Background, times 100.
That wraps up Character Creation. I’ll now begin going over various combat mechanics that my players and I will be using in our upcoming session. Again, this won’t be a list of every mechanic in the 300 page rulebook, but I’ll be going over some universal actions and their mechanics in NewEdo. I’ll end with an explanation of this system’s unique Legend and Fate mechanics.
Movement
One of the first things everyone needs to understand in any TRPG is movement. In NewEdo, your Move determines how many metres you can shift per turn. Move is equal to your Reflex and Heart Trait divided by your Size rounded up.
Moving takes up a Move Action, which is one of three types of actions a character can make on their turn. The three types of actions are:
● Move Action
● Quick Action
● and Full Action
You can make one of each of these actions per turn. As I mentioned earlier, moving uses up a Move Action, however there may be other actions that specify using a Move Action other than just moving, such as Taking Aim or driving a vehicle.
Attacking
Another common mechanic in any TRPG is attacking. An attack is usually a Full Action, but can also be a Quick Action in some cases. Two common types of attacks are Melee and Projectile. I’ll explain the mechanics of each.
● Melee Attacks are made by rolling Power plus the appropriate weapon Skill, and your
Target Number is your opponent’s Defence.
● Projectile Attacks are made by rolling Perception plus the appropriate weapon Skill, and
your Target Number is your opponent’s Size multiplied by your weapon’s Range Modifier.
○ You may call Raises before attacking to increase damage. Each Raise adds five
to your Target Number, but increases the weapon’s damage by 1d10. After hitting with an attack, you need to roll for damage. Here’s what you need to roll:
● For Melee, roll Power plus the weapon’s damage dice.
● For Projectile, roll the weapon’s damage dice. Remember to add any d10’s from Raises.
Taking Aim, Advantages, and Disadvantages
When setting up for a Projectile Attack, you can use your Move Action to Take Aim in order to gain an Advantage. An Advantage is simply an extra d10 added to a roll, one that can explode like a Trait dice. A Disadvantage is the opposite, removing a d10 from a roll. If there are no d10’s remaining, you remove the highest dice instead. Advantages and Disadvantages come up in many different scenarios, and can cancel each other out if both are present. Taking Aim is one of the most common ways to gain an advantage in combat.
Rolling Skill Checks
To determine what dice you roll during an attack or skill check, you need to check the appropriate Trait and Skill. For your Trait, the tens place of your Trait determines how many d10 you can roll for the check. Keep in mind that d10’s explode, meaning that if you roll a ten, you can re-roll that dice and add the next result to the total. After determining how many d10’s from your Trait, add the Focus Dice from the appropriate Skill. These dice can range from a d4 to d12, but they don’t explode on rolling max. The Target Number of non combat related skill checks is determined by the GM based on the difficulty. A Sample Contest Target Number table can be found on pg. 212.
Casting Magic
Similar to attacks and skill checks, casting magic also uses a Trait and Skill. All Rotes use Shinpi as its Trait, and with the exception of the four Common Rotes, all Rotes have an associated Skill that is rolled when casting. For example, the Soothe Rote uses the Meditation Skill, so if you plan on using Soothe, it's recommended you also have training in Meditation. You can find a list of all Rotes starting on pg. 158. Each Rote lists the following:
● Name
● Action
● Target Number
● Legend Cost
● Range
● Duration
● Casting Skill
● and a Description
Restoring Legend
If you find yourself casting a lot of magic and running out of Temporary Legend, you can use your Followers Background to restore some lost Legend Points. Rolling for Followers takes a Full Action, and you roll d10’s equal to your Followers Rank. You can roll Followers once per session.
Stealth
To make an attempt at Stealth, there must be some reasonable chance of you not being seen: darkness, fog, a distraction, someone or something blocking sight of you. You don’t necessarily need to know where your (potential) observers are to attempt Stealth, but if you’re able to scout out all observers (guards, cameras, etc.) prior to or during your Stealth attempt, you gain Advantage on subsequent Stealth rolls.
A Stealth roll is made as an Opposed Contest, where the character attempting Stealth rolls Reflex plus the Stealth Skill against any opponent’s passive or active Perception. Passive Perception is a Free Action, rolled using only Perception, and is for situations where no one’s actively watching. Active Perception is a Quick Action Interrupt, rolled using either Perception plus Survival or Perception plus Investigation.
While in Stealth, you may only move at half your Move speed and must end your turn obscured or hidden in some way, or you immediately lose Stealth. If you dash across an open space while in Stealth, you may become Exposed if any observers catch sight of you.
Cover
Cover can only protect you from Ranged attacks. There are three types of Cover:
● No Cover: Protects less than 30% of your body. Provides no bonuses.
● Half Cover: Protects between 30 to 95% of your body. Ranged Attacks against you have
Disadvantage.
● Full Cover: Only 5% of your body is exposed. You can’t be targeted by Ranged Attacks
barring a few exceptions.
With some of the basic mechanics out of the way, I’d like to focus on some specific Skills that certain players for my upcoming game have chosen. There are 37 different Skills to choose in NewEdo, so this is only a small fraction of what’s available.
Dodge
Dodge is a unique Skill that adds to a character’s Defence against Melee Attacks. An invaluable Skill for an up close and personal fighter. At Rank 3, you can start Dodging Projectile Attacks. Dodging is a Quick Action Interrupt, so it’s useful in conjunction with moving and acting while being attacked. Perfect for a martial fighter or ninja.
Banter
A fun social Skill that uses the Reflex Trait. Banter is used to steer a conversation with multiple people, helping or hindering others. At Ranks 2 and 3, you gain the Abilities Chime In and Burn, which allow you to make a Quick Action Interrupt to either add or subtract your Banter Roll from someone else’s Social Roll.
Athletics
Like in most TRPG’s, Athletics is your physical prowess in running, jumping, climbing, swimming, etc. In NewEdo, you unlock some special bonuses at later Ranks. At Rank 2, your Climb, Swim, and Lifting modifiers all increased. At Rank 3, you gain Tumble, an ability that allows you to reduce falling damage by the amount rolled from an Athletics Check.
Unarmed
Unarmed is your ability to fight without a weapon. It increases your ability to Grapple, and quickly increases damage to unarmed attack early on at Ranks 1 and 2. At Rank 3, you gain the ability to call Raises with unarmed attacks, a mechanic usually reserved to Projectile Attacks.
Tactics
Tactics checks are made right before the beginning of a fight. The leaders of both squads roll Savvy plus Tactics plus 1d10 for every active teammate to determine who’s superior. The losing team begins combat Demoralized, a status condition that reduces their Initiative and Resolve by 5 each, and they can no longer take Quick Action Interrupt Attacks against Exposed targets.
If you need to look up other Skills and what bonuses you get at each rank, begin on pg. 191. I’ll finish things up by going over two of NewEdo’s unique mechanics: Legend and Fate.
Legend
Legend is your character’s overall power level, and measures how “Legendary” you are in the world. At a certain Legend ranking, your Path is increased, giving you new abilities. In addition to acting as your power level, it also fuels a resource known as Temporary Legend. Your Temporary Legend is restored between sessions, and it’s used to cast Rotes and activate certain abilities, usually from Skill Ranks. It also acts as a last ditch HP Pool, known as Burning Legend. If you take damage past zero, you begin burning through Temporary Legend. Once all of your HP and Temporary Legend are depleted, you die for good.
Fate
Every character has a Fate Card, which acts as a personal random d100 roll chart. There are many things you can add to your Fate Card that come from character creation. You can roll for Fate once per turn, unless otherwise specified, to gamble for good fortune versus bad luck. When rolling for Fate, it’s important to remember you can only roll when there are stakes, and only before you roll for a normal check. If you roll a Critical Success, you automatically succeed. Rolling a Botch means you automatically fail.
And that concludes this episode of Rules Explanation for NewEdo! I hope that my players can use this to help prepare them for their upcoming game, but it should be noted that there’s much more to learn than what was mentioned here. I encourage my players and anyone else listening to read up on more of the rules, especially those that pertain to your character. This is a large game, so it’ll require a lot of trial and error, even for veterans like myself, however this system holds a lot of potential for detailed character development, tactical combat, and immersive storytelling. If you haven’t picked this game up yet, and it sounds interesting, please consider buying it from Salty dash Games dot com. That’s Salty, HYPHEN, Games dot com. If you still aren’t convinced, please listen to my upcoming episode, listen in on our game, and decide then! Thank you, and goodbye!
Dead Ringers is an actual play podcast using the Dicing with Death TTRPG system. Join Arby, Bo, and Mary as they navigate through the Land of the Dead, meeting old faces and working to return home.
Dead Ringers is an actual play podcast using the Dicing with Death TTRPG system. Join Arby, Bo, and Mary as they navigate through the Land of the Dead, meeting old faces and working to return home.
Join Maeve, Bartholomew and Armando as they punch parents, fight fish, and bribe boatmen to get back from the land of the dead before it's too late! You Only Live Twice is an actual play episode of Dicing With Death.
Join Maeve, Bartholomew and Armando as they punch parents, fight fish, and bribe boatmen to get back from the land of the dead before it's too late! You Only Live Twice is an actual play episode of Dicing With Death.
Bartholomew, Guvo and Zidane, as new members of the guild, offer to go rescue the sheriff of Karmic Hills and uncover a problem affecting the tiny town. Stab the Crab is an actual play podcast of Desperado Quickdraw Edition.
Bartholomew, Guvo and Zidane, as new members of the guild, offer to go rescue the sheriff of Karmic Hills and uncover a problem affecting the tiny town. Stab the Crab is an actual play podcast of Desperado Quickdraw Edition.
A GM’s thoughts on how to play Desperado Quickdraw.
Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Desperado Quickdraw. In this episode, I’ll share my thoughts after reading the rule book. Hopefully this episode will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play Desperado Quickdraw yourselves.
The sections I’ll talk about are character creation, how to move, how to attack, alternatives to character death,how to use skills, how to help your allies, and spellcasting.
Character creation: Desperado Quickdraw provides some handy dandy character creation randomizers using a deck of cards. Don’t know what character you’re going to play? Draw from a standard playing card deck to generate your character’s name, background, combat stats, feats, starting items, and ammo. For example if you draw a diamond your background is the gambler, who has 2 grit, 4 wit, a firearm aim of 2d12, and a melee aim of 2d12. Here in Firebreathing Kittens, for my players, because we are the same character all season, please feel free to pick from these random lists to build your character. You can also change the flavor; a ranged weapon can be called a bullet, arrow, fireball, etc.
How to move: You can move as many yards as your grit score at the start of your turn. If you move while attacking it makes you less accurate, decreasing your aim DC.
How to attack: Here’s an example melee weapon, the dagger. You can either pierce or cut with a dagger. If you’re piercing, it takes one action to draw the dagger from its sheath, and one action to attack. A dagger gets plus two steps to its accuracy and has a wound DC of 3. Here’s an example attack: You are standing within a yard of an enemy. Your dagger is drawn. You try to stab the enemy with the dagger, so, being a gambler, you roll your melee aim of two d12 dice. The dice result is 12 overall. You add plus two for the dagger’s accuracy, so that’s 14. The person’s right next to you, so your aim DC was zero, so you hit them. The wound DC is plus 14. The 3 wound DC of the dagger is increased to 17. That’s not twenty over, so you didn’t insta-kill your target. They are wounded and must make a fortitude check. They roll grit and compare it versus their total wounds received overall, which so far is just this one stab. Your GM announces they failed their roll, so they take one grit damage. Remember your gambler statted player characters has 2 grit, so taking one grit damage means this NPC probably is pretty badly injured.
Next, let’s talk about ranged attacks. Desperado Quickdraw requires you to draw your weapon, load it, chamber a new round, cock the weapon, fire, and eject the round. That’s about five rounds of preparation for one round of dealing damage, which is different than other tabletop roleplaying game systems you might be used to. Here’s an example weapon, the Baron Lawman single action revolving pistol. This is a short barrel weapon that can hold six shots. Its ammo is 0.44 magnum. It has a wound DC of 6. To fire this weapon, you’d need to first spend one action to draw it from the holster, three actions per cartridge being loaded (one to draw ammo, one to load, and one to rotate the cylinder), an action to fire it, and then three actions per shell expelled to open and eject and rotate the cylinder. Here’s an example of an attack with a single action revolving pistol made by the friend of the gambler. Friend of the gambler, fellow player, your target is ten yards away from the party, which is about thirty feet, so the Aim DC is 4. You make an aim check, which since you’re a gambler means you roll 2d12. The result is a 14. You beat the aim DC by 10, so your wound DC is increased by plus 10. The six wound DC of the pistol is increased to 16. The GM does the fortitude check for the enemy, and announces they’ve taken one grit damage. This is the second grit damage that NPC has taken, so they drop to zero grit. At zero grit, they fall unconscious.
Alternatives to character death: When you fall to zero grit, you’re unconscious but not necessarily dead. Desperado Quickdraw has a list of lasting wounds you can take such as injured arm, leg, eye, etc, which affect your stats. I like systems that have alternatives to permanent character death. It makes me less stressed out as a GM. I don’t have to worry as much about my player needing to make a new character unless they want to.
How to use skills: Desperado Quickdraw lets you hide, listen, spot, bluff, charm, use medicine, and make insight checks. Roll a size of dice based on your ability level, like d2, d4, d6, d8, etc. Then add either grit or wit as a modifier, depending on the skill.
How to help your allies: You can do a first aid check. That’s the medicine skill. If your check is higher than your friend’s wound DC, they can ignore that wound for now. Beware: later first aid checks don’t stack, so if you try to medicine check their next wound, you have to roll against your friend’s total wound DC including that first wound they had been ignoring.
Spellcasting: Desperado Quickdraw is only a portion of the rules that Desperado has to offer. If you’d like to learn about spellcasting, check out the full version of the rules. Based upon all the cool backgrounds and items in the Quickdraw rules, the spells in the full rulebook are probably really fun, too.
I’m looking forward to playing Desperado Quickdraw in an upcoming adventure. Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat a bit. And for everyone listening, hopefully now you’re excited to find the Desperado Quickdraw rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.
Join Pearl, Errol, and Chico as they have a hell of a good time saving a birthday and Hell Casino. Hella Confidence is a oneshot actual play podcast of the Monster of the Week roleplaying game.
Join Pearl, Errol, and Chico as they have a hell of a good time saving a birthday and Hell Casino. Hella Confidence is a oneshot actual play podcast of the Monster of the Week roleplaying game.
The Multiversal Tournament of Champions is coming to Niqamui! Can Camilla, Grantham and Reine prevail against the likes of Gravedigger and The Avalanche? Find out in Old Man Strength, an actual play podcast of BRAWL!
The Multiversal Tournament of Champions is coming to Niqamui! Can Camilla, Grantham & Reine prevail against the likes of Gravedigger and The Avalanche? Find out in Old Man Strength, an actual play podcast of BRAWL!
Errol, Reine, and Jack set off on a dream fueled quest to save the world one handicapable robot at a time. Come along on this actual play podcast of the Trove Foundation TTRPG and try not to step in the ecological disasters along the way.
Errol, Reine, and Jack set off on a dream fueled quest to save the world one handicapable robot at a time. Come along on this actual play podcast of the Trove Foundation TTRPG and try not to step in the ecological disasters along the way.
Chico, Luna, & Lothario mentor scouts at the Junior Adventurer's Festival. As they traverse the events, a dark purpose is uncovered... Festival of Lies is an actual play podcast of Space Knights
Chico, Luna, & Lothario mentor scouts at the Junior Adventurer's Festival. As they traverse the events, a dark purpose is uncovered... Festival of Lies is an actual play podcast of Space Knights role playing game.
We discuss the rules for the tabletop roleplaying games Crowns, Dragon Slayers 2, Foretold, Specters and Spurs, Brains & Brawn, Ironsworn, Spellcore Mafioso, LURPS, Lasers & Feelings, Welcome to the WWA, and Sexy Battle Wizards.
Here's a list of each episode and TTRPG system we played this quarter.
Otter And Odder was an actual play podcast of Crowns.
Code Purple was an actual play podcast of Dragon Slayers 2.
Snackspionage! and Backup Pan were actual play podcasts of Foretold.
Bloodletting It Go was an actual play podcast of Specters and Spurs.
Gravity Boost was an actual play podcast of Brains & Brawn.
Eat Humble Pied was an actual play podcast of Ironsworn.
Corpses Don’t Honk was an actual play podcast of Spell Core Mafioso.
Water Rising was an actual play podcast of LURPS.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better and Minimum Rager were actual play podcasts of Lasers & Feelings.
Trash Can Do was an actual play podcast of Welcome to the WWA.
Frigid Beach was an actual play podcast of Sexy Battle Wizards.
Kitschy, Dominque, and Flex Arcana dive into a Winter Wonderland threatening to ruin the bi-monthly FBK beach party, and rekindle a few fires along the way. Frigid Beach is an actual play podcast of Sexy Battle Wizards by Grant Howitt.
Kitschy, Dominque, and Flex Arcana dive into a Winter Wonderland threatening to ruin the bi-monthly FBK beach party, and rekindle a few fires along the way.
Frigid Beach is an actual play podcast of Sexy Battle Wizards by Grant Howitt.
Trash Can Do is an actual play podcast of "Welcome to the WWA". Join Avarice H., Errol Corvidbough and Ignatious Cogbright as they wrestle their way to the heart of a kidnapping and water conspiracy.
Trash Can Do is an actual play podcast of "Welcome to the WWA". Join Avarice H., Errol Corvidbough and Ignatious Cogbright as they wrestle their way to the heart of a kidnapping and water conspiracy.
Whisked away into a series of escape rooms, Ava, Norage and Reine have to puzzle and fight their way to the 'hoard' waiting at the end. Minimum Rager is an actual play podcast episode of 'Lasers & Feelings'.
Whisked away into a series of escape rooms, Ava, Norage and Reine have to puzzle and fight their way to the 'hoard' waiting at the end. Minimum Rager is an actual play podcast episode of 'Lasers & Feelings'.
Join Lothario, Errol, and Chico as they solve puzzles to get their sweet, sweet prize in this Lasers and Feelings game!
Join Lothario, Errol, and Chico as they solve puzzles to get their sweet, sweet prize in this Lasers and Feelings game!
Join Errol, Kitschy, and Reine as they party on the beach and encounter a mysterious island fraught with danger. Water Rising is an actual play podcast using the L.U.R.P.S TTRPG System.
Join Errol, Kitschy, and Reine as they party on the beach and encounter a mysterious island fraught with danger. Water Rising is an actual play podcast using the L.U.R.P.S TTRPG System.
A mysterious woman comes to Dash, Kassie and Horatio with an offer they can’t refuse: stealing the prized possession of the Safiosi crime family. The reward? LOTS of money. [TTRPG: Spellcore Mafioso]
A mysterious woman comes to Dash, Kassie and Horatio with an offer they can’t refuse: stealing the prized possession of the Safiosi crime family. The reward? LOTS of money. [TTRPG: Spellcore Mafioso]
Chico, Robin & Reine are on the job to stop a cruel poaching operation targeting pied-morph minkbirds. Can they prevail against organized crime? Find out in Eat Humble Pied, an actual play podcast episode of Ironsworn.
Chico, Robin & Reine are on the job to stop a cruel poaching operation targeting pied-morph minkbirds. Can they prevail against organized crime? Find out in Eat Humble Pied, an actual play podcast episode of Ironsworn.
“Gravity Boost” is an actual play podcast of the Brains and Brawn RPG system. Join Errol, Ignatious, and Norage as they travel to the Realms' Fair, where technological marvels and peril awaits.
“Gravity Boost” is an actual play podcast of the Brains and Brawn RPG system. Join Errol, Ignatious, and Norage as they travel to the Realms' Fair, where technological marvels and peril awaits.
With blood as the ticket, the tourist trap Sangui-La opens its turnstiles. Join Ava and Reine as they encounter unwelcome acquaintances, search for a blood-sucking monster and explore Sangui-La. Bloodletting It Go is an actual play podcast episode of the Specters and Spurs TTRPG System.
With blood as the ticket, the tourist trap Sangui-La opens its turnstiles. Join Ava and Reine as they encounter unwelcome acquaintances, search for a blood-sucking monster and explore Sangui-La. Bloodletting It Go is an actual play podcast episode of the Specters and Spurs TTRPG System.
Reine, Graveyard, and Cheryl are enlisted as counter spies at a food and beverage expo. Using their newfound powers of influencing fate (a la the TTRPG system Foretold), will the party be successful in thwarting corporate espionage?
Reine, Graveyard, and Cheryl are enlisted as counter spies at a food and beverage expo. Using their newfound powers of influencing fate (a la the TTRPG system Foretold), will the party be successful in thwarting corporate espionage?
Follow the story of Ava, Errol, and Vincent in this adventure as they bend fate to prevent corporate espionage at the Banilla food Konventions center. Snackspionage! uses the Foretold RPG system. Companion episode: Backup Pan.
Follow the story of Ava, Errol, and Vincent in this adventure as they bend fate to prevent corporate espionage at the Banilla food Konventions center. Snackspionage! uses the Foretold RPG system. Companion episode: Backup Pan.
Join Errol, Vincent, and Chico in Code Purple, and actual play podcast of Dragonslayers 2nd edition rpg.
Join Errol, Vincent, and Chico in Code Purple, and actual play podcast of Dragonslayers 2nd edition rpg.
Join Flex, Norage, and Ignatious as they are sent to Lake Carashae to obtain a mysterious sample for corporate thief Edmas Thomison. There will be monasteries to explore and unfriendly wildlife to contend with on this week's edition of Firebreathing Kittens. Otter And Odder is an actual play podcast of the Crowns system.
Join Flex, Norage, and Ignatious as they are sent to Lake Carashae to obtain a mysterious sample for corporate thief Edmas Thomison. There will be monasteries to explore and unfriendly wildlife to contend with on this week's edition of Firebreathing Kittens. Otter And Odder is an actual play podcast of the Crowns system.
We discuss the rules for the tabletop roleplaying games D6 Feet Under, Relic Hunter, Swamp Troll Witches, Lasers and Feelings, Fairy Heist, Shepherds, Ironsworn, Super Punk, Crash Pandas, Imperium Magisterium, Dungeoneering, New Edo.
Here's a list of each episode and TTRPG system we played this quarter.
A Storm, A Ship, And A One Way Trip: actual play podcast of D6 Feet Under.
Stop Dragon My Heart Around: actual play podcast of Relic Hunter.
The Potion Commotion: actual play podcast of Swamp Troll Witches.
So Then I Started Blasting: actual play podcast of Lasers and Feelings.
X Marks The Spot: actual play podcast of Fairy Heist.
Deli Of The Beast: actual play podcast of Shepherds.
Sworn To Be Wild: actual play podcast of Ironsworn.
HR Violations IN SPAAAAACE: actual play podcast of Super Punk.
Trickamui Drift: actual play podcast of Crash Pandas.
Blues Ooze: actual play podcast of Imperium Magisterium.
Mine Sweepers: actual play podcast of Ironsworn.
Sanctuary: actual play podcast of Ironsworn.
To Koboldly Go and A Shot In the Dark: actual play podcast of Dungeoneering.
Hare Raising Wedding: actual play podcast of New Edo.
A mysterious message arrives, a divined adventure begins, & a wedding invitation catches up with Chico. Join Chico, Errol, & Lothario in their adventure based on the mechanics of the New Edo system. Hare Raising Wedding is an actual play podcast of the New Edo tabletop rpg system.
A mysterious message arrives, a divined adventure begins, & a wedding invitation catches up with Chico. Join Chico, Errol, & Lothario in their adventure based on the mechanics of the New Edo system. Hare Raising Wedding is an actual play podcast of the New Edo tabletop rpg system.
In this week's Dungeoneering game, join Ava, Flex, and Olathe as they delve deep for ancient artifacts and is that a robot? A Shot In The Dark is an actual play podcast of the Dungeoneering tabletop role playing game.
In this week's Dungeoneering game, join Ava, Flex, and Olathe as they delve deep for ancient artifacts and is that a robot? A Shot In The Dark is an actual play podcast of the Dungeoneering tabletop role playing game.
Join Graveyard, Rufus, and Tamara as they dungeon delve for riches, glory, and friendship? This episode uses game mechanics from the game Dungeoneering. "To Koboldly Go" is an actual play podcast of the Dungeoneering table top role playing game.
Join Graveyard, Rufus, and Tamara as they dungeon delve for riches, glory, and friendship? This episode uses game mechanics from the game Dungeoneering. "To Koboldly Go" is an actual play podcast of the Dungeoneering table top role playing game.
Join Errol, Dierdre, and Krista as they travel through a pocket dimension and decide which stupidly wealthy sister is right and which needs custodial care in this week’s Ironsworn adventure.
Join Errol, Dierdre, and Krista as they travel through a pocket dimension and decide which stupidly wealthy sister is right and which needs custodial care in this week’s Ironsworn adventure.
Join Chico, Ignatious, & Zak as they answer the call to action from Hellwig the kobold miner, whose mining companions are trapped due to a cave in and need rescuing. Mine Sweepers is an actual play podcast of Ironsworn.
Join Chico, Ignatious, & Zak as they answer the call to action from Hellwig the kobold miner, whose mining companions are trapped due to a cave in and need rescuing. Mine Sweepers is an actual play podcast of Ironsworn.
What kind of world has lazer bears, werewolves, skyrates, and a “hero” run by three gods? A game world within a game world! Join Ava, Lori, and Kit on this meta-adventure where things get real weird real fast.
What kind of world has lazer bears, werewolves, skyrates, and a “hero” run by three gods? A game world within a game world! Join Ava, Lori, and Kit on this meta-adventure where things get real weird real fast.
What oddities appear in the desert? What secrets are gleaned from a mysterious runaway? Pearl, Lothario, and Zak find out during a mission set at the iconic Hangout Music Festival! Blues Ooze is an actual play podcast of the Imperium Magisterium role playing game.
What oddities appear in the desert? What secrets are gleaned from a mysterious runaway? Pearl, Lothario, and Zak find out during a mission set at the iconic Hangout Music Festival!
Blues Ooze is an actual play podcast of the Imperium Magisterium role playing game.
April Fools 2023: An actual play oneshot podcast of A Role Playing Game You Can Play With Your Cat.
Trickamui Drift is an actual play podcast of Crash Pandas. Get ready for the Fast and the Furriest as Graveyard Shift, Ignatius, Catherine, and Chico get turned into raccoons and race through the streets of Niqamui to catch a cop killer!
Trickamui Drift is an actual play podcast of Crash Pandas. Get ready for the Fast and the Furriest as Graveyard Shift, Ignatius, Catherine, and Chico get turned into raccoons and race through the streets of Niqamui to catch a cop killer!
HR Violations IN SPAAAAACE is a SuperPunk rpg actual play podcast oneshot adventure starring Cal, Lothario, and Jill.
HR Violations IN SPAAAAACE is a SuperPunk rpg actual play podcast oneshot adventure starring Cal, Lothario, and Jill.
A pirate, a devil, and a (bug) assassin walk into a bar… and they go to fight in a faraway arena. Will Rufus, Ava, and Euphemia rock their challengers’ worlds or taste defeat as bitter as poisoned flour? Join FBK as they try the Ironsworn system for the first time!
Sword To Be Wild is an Ironsworn actual play podcast oneshot episode.
A pirate, a devil, and a (bug) assassin walk into a bar… and they go to fight in a faraway arena. Will Rufus, Ava, and Euphemia rock their challengers’ worlds or taste defeat as bitter as poisoned flour? Join FBK as they try the Ironsworn system for the first time!
Sword To Be Wild is an Ironsworn actual play podcast oneshot episode.
Join Barten IV, Graveyard, and Pamela on an adventure.
Deli Of The Beast uses the Shepherds role playing game. Deli Of The Beast is a Shepherds actual play podcast.
Join Barten IV, Graveyard, and Pamela on an adventure.
Deli Of The Beast uses the Shepherds role playing game. Deli Of The Beast is a Shepherds actual play podcast.
Dig deep! Lothario, Rufus, and Eddie venture down into a silver mine, and find themselves in a world of giants far too big to handle. But when combat is out of the question, a heist is always the answer!
Using the TTRPG Fairy Heist the three find small solutions to big problems!
X Marks The Spot an actual play of the Runehack: Fairy Heist table top role playing game. X Marks The Spot is a Fairy Heist oneshot actual play podcast.
Dig deep! Lothario, Rufus, and Eddie venture down into a silver mine, and find themselves in a world of giants far too big to handle. But when combat is out of the question, a heist is always the answer!
Using the TTRPG Fairy Heist the three find small solutions to big problems!
X Marks The Spot an actual play of the Runehack: Fairy Heist table top role playing game. X Marks The Spot is a Fairy Heist oneshot actual play podcast.
The FBK Guild takes on a space mystery involving kidnapping, illegal gambling and secret slides! Join Eddie, Olathe, and Brandi as they unravel the chaos that's afoot!
"So Then I Started Blasting" is a Lasers and Feelings actual play podcast. This episode uses the Lasers and Feelings ttrpg.
The FBK Guild takes on a space mystery involving kidnapping, illegal gambling and secret slides! Join Eddie, Olathe, and Brandi as they unravel the chaos that's afoot!
"So Then I Started Blasting" is a Lasers and Feelings actual play podcast. This episode uses the Lasers and Feelings ttrpg.
Lothario, Rufus, and Graveyard take a “land ship” to Gardyloo in the Atchawalla Swamp to fill requisition requests they found on the quest board in the FB guild hall. They soon learn this will not be the bog-standard fetch quest they were imagining.
"The Potion Commotion" is an actual play podcast of Swamp Troll Witches, a table top role playing game. This episode of Firebreathing Kittens is a Swamp Troll Witches actual play podcast.
Lothario, Rufus, and Graveyard take a “land ship” to Gardyloo in the Atchawalla Swamp to fill requisition requests they found on the quest board in the FB guild hall. They soon learn this will not be the bog-standard fetch quest they were imagining.
"The Potion Commotion" is an actual play podcast of Swamp Troll Witches, a table top role playing game. This episode of Firebreathing Kittens is a Swamp Troll Witches actual play podcast.
A gigantic sea dragon has washed up on Niqamui's shores! Join Ava, Flex and Olathe as they literally dive into adventure to get to the heart of the matter...
This episode of Firebreathing Kittens is an actual play of the Relic Hunter ttrpg, table top role playing game. "Stop Dragon My Heart Around" is a Relic Hunter actual play podcast.
A gigantic sea dragon has washed up on Niqamui's shores! Join Ava, Flex and Olathe as they literally dive into adventure to get to the heart of the matter...
This episode of Firebreathing Kittens is an actual play of the Relic Hunter ttrpg, table top role playing game. "Stop Dragon My Heart Around" is a Relic Hunter actual play podcast.
Graveyard, Rufus, and Lothario take on an escort contract aboard the galleon The Revenge. Soon an unexpected event forces them to think differently about time, consequences, and their own mortality.
This episode is an actual play podcast of the D6 Feet Under table top role playing game. Firebreathing Kittens podcast played the ttrpg D6 Feet Under.
Graveyard, Rufus, and Lothario take on an escort contract aboard the galleon The Revenge. Soon an unexpected event forces them to think differently about time, consequences, and their own mortality.
Join Kreek, Alex, and Kimberley on this quest to solve a string of brazen robberies! Birthdays, cults, and ponies included free of charge.
Join Kreek, Alex, and Kimberley on this quest to solve a string of brazen robberies! Birthdays, cults, and ponies included free of charge.
Ava, Cal, and Claire, go to a Glasshouse. Who will break first? Find out in this thrilling episode of the FBK!
Ava, Cal, and Claire, go to a Glasshouse. Who will break first? Find out in this thrilling episode of the FBK!
Our Noob adventures Ava, Kit, and Cal find problems with a swamp, a sheriff, and a Tanager in this week's Bumfuzzle of an episode!
Our Noob adventures Ava, Kit, and Cal find problems with a swamp, a sheriff, and a Tanager in this week's Bumfuzzle of an episode!
Join Kreek, Pearl, and Alex as they bumble into each other in the swampy town of Daingean, where a nefarious Reveler seeks to enchant its residents. Will our kittens come to their rescue, or will they succumb to his devious spells?
Join Kreek, Pearl, and Alex as they bumble into each other in the swampy town of Daingean, where a nefarious Reveler seeks to enchant its residents. Will our kittens come to their rescue, or will they succumb to his devious spells?
Season 2022 Finale: What Do You Want?
What would you do if all your wishes were granted? Become royalty, win the lottery, lobotomize your friend? Gatsby, Jade and Wing struggle with this very question as they find out that getting what you want isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Trailer for the Season 2022 Finale: What Do You Want? What would you do if all your wishes were granted? Become royalty, win the lottery, lobotomize your friend? Gatsby, Jade and Wing struggle with this very question as they find out that getting what you want isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Join Runii, Skirmish, and Lucien as they enter the annual Niqamui fighting tournament in a quest to repair the Guildhall Roof! What lies waiting for them at its end, and will they even survive long enough to see it?
Join Runii, Skirmish, and Lucien as they enter the annual Niqamui fighting tournament in a quest to repair the Guildhall Roof! What lies waiting for them at its end, and will they even survive long enough to see it?
Soul Orbs, Simmonds and Eldritch Gods collide! Join Rook, Zero and Wing in an adventure where they kick some serious high CR behinds!
Soul Orbs, Simmonds and Eldritch Gods collide! Join Rook, Zero and Wing in an adventure where they kick some serious high CR behinds!
Join Kaern, Stella, and Jade as they go to the grocery store, settle old scores, and bring about the end of the world.
Join Kaern, Stella, and Jade as they go to the grocery store, settle old scores, and bring about the end of the world.
Join Zero, Simmond, and Rook as they explore the mysterious happenings in a village. Will our heroes figure out the mystery of the disappearances or risk disappearing in a crystal grave? Join us to find out.
Join Zero, Simmond, and Rook as they explore the mysterious happenings in a village. Will our heroes figure out the mystery of the disappearances or risk disappearing in a crystal grave? Join us to find out.
Mysterious artifacts are uncovered & it's up to Skirmish, Grizzlt, & Jade to discover their long dormant secret. Explorations take them farther down the trail & they uncover a forgotten world in need of help. Will the Firebreathing Kittens be able to defend their new friends?
Mysterious artifacts are uncovered & it's up to Skirmish, Grizzlt, & Jade to discover their long dormant secret. Explorations take them farther down the trail & they uncover a forgotten world in need of help. Will the Firebreathing Kittens be able to defend their new friends?
Join Pugsley, Stella and Kaern as they make crafts, get kidnapped, and change the face of one of their friends forever.
Join Pugsley, Stella and Kaern as they make crafts, get kidnapped, and change the face of one of their friends forever.
Follow Zero, Simmond and, Willy as they explore the Ekenblim hive. Listen as we uncover mysteries of the Ekenblim's intent and secrets from the character's pasts. Will they survive the hive and the ghosts from their pasts? Listen and find out!
Follow Zero, Simmond and, Willy as they explore the Ekenblim hive. Listen as we uncover mysteries of the Ekenblim's intent and secrets from the character's pasts. Will they survive the hive and the ghosts from their pasts? Listen and find out!
Come along with Rook, Grizzlt and Wing as they "volunteer" to test Ekenblim dust portals, discover what goes on in an Ekenblim hive and maybe hear a familiar voice. Adventure awaits for those who listen!
Come along with Rook, Grizzlt and Wing as they "volunteer" to test Ekenblim dust portals, discover what goes on in an Ekenblim hive and maybe hear a familiar voice. Adventure awaits for those who listen!
A mysterious summons from Gatsby leads Stella, Skirmish & Rook to a spooky mansion far from home. However their planned sleepover soon turns into a "Creep"over. Will the three of them make it through the night or does this haunted house have other plans?
A mysterious summons from Gatsby leads Stella, Skirmish & Rook to a spooky mansion far from home. However their planned sleepover soon turns into a "Creep"over. Will the three of them make it through the night or does this haunted house have other plans?
Zero, Lucien, and Simmond embark on a quest to locate a pastry thief. Steal some new shiny gear and find out meet a dancing Ogre child. Along the way they find that the FDA really does allow a certain PPM of bug parts.
Zero, Lucien, and Simmond embark on a quest to locate a pastry thief. Steal some new shiny gear and find out meet a dancing Ogre child. Along the way they find that the FDA really does allow a certain PPM of bug parts.
FBK goes uptown! Join Stella, Lucien, and Skirmish as they attend a most elegant gala. But will they be able keep their cover AND accomplish their secret mission? Gifts are given! Proposals are made! Hearts are won!
FBK goes uptown! Join Stella, Lucien, and Skirmish as they attend a most elegant gala. But will they be able keep their cover AND accomplish their secret mission? Gifts are given! Proposals are made! Hearts are won!
Gatsby, Pugsley, Berta, and Skirmish take to the trees! Join them as they fight ferocious fiends, traverse tall trees, restore rustic residences, and seek to save a smiling seed.
Gatsby, Pugsley, Berta, and Skirmish take to the trees! Join them as they fight ferocious fiends, traverse tall trees, restore rustic residences, and seek to save a smiling seed.
Sometimes life gets you up a tree and you feel like you’re going nuts. Join Runi, Stella and Willy as they fight monsters and the system itself.
Sometimes life gets you up a tree and you feel like you’re going nuts. Join Runi, Stella and Willy as they fight monsters and the system itself.
Do you like Dragons, Time Travel, and Shenanigans? Then this episode is for you! Join Jenny, Skirmish, and Walker in this week’s episode of Firebreathing Kittens!
Do you like Dragons, Time Travel, and Shenanigans? Then this episode is for you! Join Jenny, Skirmish, and Walker in this week’s episode of Firebreathing Kittens!
Simmond, Jade, and Willy embark on a mysterious train ride to a more mysterious town. Join us as we discuss the morality of death and undeath on Willy‘s special day.
Simmond, Jade, and Willy embark on a mysterious train ride to a more mysterious town. Join us as we discuss the morality of death and undeath on Willy‘s special day.
A new bakery in Niqamui has the Bakers Guild worried, but are their concerns just sour dough? Runii, Pugsley, and Gatsby investigate, but are they bready for what they find?
A new bakery in Niqamui has the Bakers Guild worried, but are their concerns just sour dough? Runii, Pugsley, and Gatsby investigate, but are they bready for what they find?
Join Kaern, Stella, and Jenny in this crazy adventure as they investigate mysteries, settle scores, and HUSTLE. But here’s the question: do they get this bread, or do they get whaled on?
Join Kaern, Stella, and Jenny in this crazy adventure as they investigate mysteries, settle scores, and HUSTLE. But here’s the question: do they get this bread, or do they get whaled on?
A long time ago, the Ekenblim descended. Out of the ashes of the old world came an old woman and a talking sword, with one mission: revenge. Revenge and bagels. Two missions.
A long time ago, the Ekenblim descended. Out of the ashes of the old world came an old woman and a talking sword, with one mission: revenge. Revenge and bagels. Two missions.
Grab a marker and take some notes, FBK has gone Monster of the Week. Join Skirmish, Stella and Will as they go a dinner party for all time… and places?
Grab a marker and take some notes, FBK has gone Monster of the Week. Join Skirmish, Stella and Will as they go a dinner party for all time… and places?
Skirmish, Jade, and Jenny must find out who is changing the law. Will our adventurers end up in jail or make the arrest?
Skirmish, Jade, and Jenny must find out who is changing the law. Will our adventurers end up in jail or make the arrest?
Join Niserie, Jade, and Stella as they solve a train mystery and solve the bad vibes in the forest.
Join Niserie, Jade, and Stella as they solve a train mystery and solve the bad vibes in the forest.
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today. We have released an audiobook for Rachel Lindley’s full novel length adaptation of the adventure A Bully Good Time on audible.com! This is great news. Now, you can put on your headphones or turn up your speakers and experience this bayou delving adventure as spoken word. Here is the back of the book and then a brief excerpt; I’ll play you the audio sample.
The back of the book:
Frogs, boats, and beignets! The Firebreathing Kittens venture to the south of the fantasy world of Guaso to investigate a missing persons case. There's Pidge, a plucky gnome with shapeshifting magic; Moka, an angel's daughter with miraculous healing powers; and Manford, a nihilist and would-be scoundrel with a heart of gold. Within a world of vine-choked cypress and murky water, the three discover unlikely allies, strange philosophies, and danger. They must triumph against the swamp before they disappear themselves. In her debut novel, Rachel Lindley offers a tale of exploration, mystery, and friendship, where the next good thing might be waiting a few steps beyond the river's edge.
Please support us and pick up your copy of A Bully Good Time from audible.com, and tell your friends about us. Thank you!
It’s not just another bug hunt, it’s also a tree branch fetch quest! Join us as Clipclop, Jade and Wing get double the quests and double the reveals in this episode of Firebreathing Kittens! #dnd #podcast #firebreathingkittens
It’s not just another bug hunt, it’s also a tree branch fetch quest! Join us as Clipclop, Jade and Wing get double the quests and double the reveals in this episode of Firebreathing Kittens! #dnd #podcast #firebreathingkittens
Who wants to look after kids? Not many people, it seems, as Skirmish, Gatsby and Jade are suddenly responsible for running a summer camp! But then the kidnapping starts...
Who wants to look after kids? Not many people, it seems, as Skirmish, Gatsby and Jade are suddenly responsible for running a summer camp! But then the kidnapping starts...
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today. Tom Maygrove has written a full novel length adaptation of the Firebreathing Kittens podcast adventure Masquerade Madness! This is great news. Now, you can find a comfy spot and experience this ballroom cat burglary mystery as written word.
If you want to help Firebreathing Kittens out, please pick up a promotionally free ebook copy of Masquerade Madness between July 16th and July 20th 2022. After that time window, the ebook will return to normal price. We would really appreciate it if you could get a copy and leave a five star review. Thank you. The link is: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B6B8TRK2
Not your parents' FBK. It's rawer, scarier, full of content warnings. With Dr Crud, Willy, and Cordelia on a long-haul cargo run, it's FBK in space...space...space...space... (uses the Mothership RPG)
Not your parents' FBK. It's rawer, scarier, full of content warnings. With Dr Crud, Willy, and Cordelia on a long-haul cargo run, it's FBK in space...space...space...space... (uses the Mothership RPG)
If your favorite colors are devilkin, gnome/elf and bird, then you're sure to love this episode! In a splash and a poof Jade, Runii, Wing and Nugget spread joy and color while also reuniting two separated hearts.
If your favorite colors are devilkin, gnome/elf and bird, then you're sure to love this episode! In a splash and a poof Jade, Runii, Wing and Nugget spread joy and color while also reuniting 2 separated hearts.
Stella, Balpetor, and Simmond the Kind set out on routine patrols but gets caught in a swirling snowstorm of intrigue. Watch as they follow a map and a frog to match wits with the mob this week on #firebreathingkittens
Stella, Balpetor, and Simmond the Kind set out on routine patrols but gets caught in a swirling snowstorm of intrigue. Watch as they follow a map and a frog to match wits with the mob this week on #firebreathingkittens
What starts out as an innocent bout of graverobbing and appraisal fraud soon turns philosophical as Gatsby, Jade and Willy set out to investigate reports of a strange grey being with an inscrutable message...
What starts out as an innocent bout of graverobbing and appraisal fraud soon turns philosophical as Gatsby, Jade and Willy set out to investigate reports of a strange grey being with an inscrutable message...
How does one man steal 120 pigs in one night? Simmond, Wing, and Balpetor pursue their bounty to solve this pig farm mystery and discover a worldwide threat!
How does one man steal 120 pigs in one night? Simmond, Wing, and Balpetor pursue their bounty to solve this pig farm mystery and discover a worldwide threat!
Runii, Lozo, and Jade investigate a powder being smuggled through a warehouse just outside of the town guard's jurisdiction. After surveilling the operation, the kittens uncover and confront an old adversary in disguise.
Runii, Lozo, and Jade investigate a powder being smuggled through a warehouse just outside of the town guard's jurisdiction. After surveilling the operation, the kittens uncover and confront an old adversary in disguise.
Balpetor, Clip-Clop, and Skirmish find themselves on the trail of a kidnapping. The trail leads them to a local tavern where the group performs a kidnapping of their own, through a vortex, and to a burnt down cathedral harbouring a thorny horror.
Balpetor, Clip-Clop, and Skirmish find themselves on the trail of a kidnapping. The trail leads them to a local tavern where the group performs a kidnapping of their own, through a vortex, and to a burnt down cathedral harbouring a thorny horror.
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today. Gareth John Jones has written a radio play adaptation of the adventure Mouse and Teapot: A Love Story! This is great news. Now, you can find a comfy spot and experience this shape changing adventure as written word. Or if you’ve got some friends, you could put this script on as a show! Here is the radio play’s link, description, and then I’ll play a snippet of the podcast it was based on.Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2K7C6KC/The radio play’s description is as follows: Blursed items and a policeman with a penchant for pottery? Join Tornan, Furious and Rollo as they investigate Niqamui police department's 1,000th crime of the year in... Polymorph and Porcelain, a radio play adaptation of the actual play podcast, "Mouse & Teapot: A Love Story".Please support us and pick up your copy of Polymorph and Porcelain from amazon.com, and tell your friends about us. Thank you!https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2K7C6KC/
Simmond, Wing, and Jade are presented with two opposing tasks: defend the disgruntled employee, or uphold a greedy corporation who cannot produce a contract. As they gain more information, they must decide what it means to be right, moral, and just.
Simmond, Wing, and Jade are presented with two opposing tasks: defend the disgruntled employee, or uphold a greedy corporation who cannot produce a contract. As they gain more information, they must decide what it means to be right, moral, and just.
The annual NiqaCon is here and Kosmos, Clip Clop, and Willy have tickets. While attending, our heroes try to discover who has sabotaged a seamstress's costumes. Can they uncover the foul culprits or do they have their sights set on the real victory? A cage match!
The annual NiqaCon is here and Kosmos, Clip Clop, and Willy have tickets. While attending, our heroes try to discover who has sabotaged a seamstress's costumes. Can they uncover the foul culprits or do they have their sights set on the real victory? A cage match!
Lights! Camera! Sabotage? While at NiqaCon, Cloudio, Sinclair, & Skirmish investigate who's trying to ruin an artist's chance at a grand prize. But the search for culprits reveals a broader conspiracy. Will our heroes crack the case & save the day?
Lights! Camera! Sabotage? While at NiqaCon, Cloudio, Sinclair, & Skirmish investigate who's trying to ruin an artist's chance at a grand prize. But the search for culprits reveals a broader conspiracy. Will our heroes crack the case & save the day?
When Stella, Jade, and Wing ride a Hell-evator deep into the heart of temptation, they find more than they bargained for. Will they make the right decisions, and will they make it out with their souls intact?
A dark mirror shows us indebted reflections of our heroes with a job to do taken out of desperation. Join Skirmish, Kosmos, and Jade in this adventure into the bizarre using the Electric Bastionland rpg system!
A dark mirror shows us indebted reflections of our heroes with a job to do taken out of desperation. Join Skirmish, Kosmos, and Jade in this adventure into the bizarre using the Electric Bastionland rpg system!
Mothers abound in this episode as Cordelia, Jade, and unapologetic non-mother Gatsby infiltrate Aegis Industries to investigate a mysterious new drink. With lives and dinner reservations on the line, will they find out the truth in time?
Mothers abound in this episode as Cordelia, Jade, and unapologetic non-mother Gatsby infiltrate Aegis Industries to investigate a mysterious new drink. With lives and dinner reservations on the line, will they find out the truth in time?
A pleasant meal is interrupted by a man's loving devotion to his wolf. Skirmish, Wing & Nugget, and Jade follow the trail and find that not everything is as it appears to be. Clues are followed, the truth is revealed, and a ruse is devised.
A pleasant meal is interrupted by a man's loving devotion to his wolf. Jade, Wing & Nugget, and Skirmish follow the trail and find that not everything is as it appears to be. Clues are followed, the truth is revealed, and a ruse is devised.
In a journey filled with revenants and revelations, will our Firebreathing Kittens unearth what they are looking for or become lost in the darkness? Join Stella, Sinclair and Kosmos in Mishui to find out!
In a journey filled with revenants and revelations, will our Firebreathing Kittens unearth what they are looking for or become lost in the darkness? Join Stella, Sinclair and Kosmos in Mishui to find out!
Join Simmond, Cordelia, and Cloudio as they set out to meet Barry the Artificer, talk to bats, make friends with grave robbers, follow a dusty trail, and solve the mystery of a missing child.
Join Simmond, Cordelia, and Cloudio as they set out to meet Barry the Artificer, talk to bats, make friends with grave robbers, follow a dusty trail, and solve the mystery of a missing child.
An urgent request dragged our heroes to a haunting quest! Join our undercover adventurers Willy, Balpetor, and Jade as they try to sniff out the source of evil in an ever-changing haunted house.
An urgent request dragged our heroes to a haunting quest! Join our undercover adventurers Willy, Balpetor, and Jade as they try to sniff out the source of evil in an ever-changing haunted house.
An odd morning turns into an explosive evening! Join Willy, Wing and Jade as they attempt to wrangle one feisty young dragon and learn a little about themselves in the process.
An odd morning turns into an explosive evening! Join Willy, Wing and Jade as they attempt to wrangle one feisty young dragon and learn a little about themselves in the process.
Are you an artist? Am I? Join Jade, Skirmish, and Cecil on an adventure to find some missing artists, explore the meaning of art, and learn the somatic components of critique.
Are you an artist? Am I? Join Jade, Skirmish, and Cecil on an adventure to find some missing artists, explore the meaning of art, and learn the somatic components of critique.
Claudio, Jade, and Sinclair receive a job to uncover a sinister plot taking over the Enclave neighborhood. Bets are made, morals are tested, and snacks are shared!
Claudio, Jade, and Sinclair receive a job to uncover a sinister plot taking over the Enclave neighborhood. Bets are made, morals are tested, and snacks are shared!
A trip to the zoo can hardly be eventful, right? Wrong. Things go from bad to worse to weird as Gatsby, Jenny and Mooses enjoy a 'lovely' day out.
A trip to the zoo can hardly be eventful, right? Wrong. Things go from bad to worse to weird as Gatsby, Jenny and Mooses enjoy a 'lovely' day out.
Stella, Wing, and Skirmish receive free tickets to the zoo atop beautiful Mt. Hokkaido! What starts as a pleasant day with animals becomes a series of mysteries as clues begin to unravel. Will our friends discover the source of their benefactor and find the truth?
Stella, Wing, and Skirmish receive free tickets to the zoo atop beautiful Mt. Hokkaido! What starts as a pleasant day with animals becomes a series of mysteries as clues begin to unravel. Will our friends discover the source of their benefactor and find the truth?
Simmond the Kind, Willy, and Jade embark on a mission to help a mystery patron. They open doors, witness personal transformation, and attempt childhood games with lives on the line.
Simmond, Willy, and Jade embark on a mission to help a mystery patron. They open doors, witness personal transformation, and attempt childhood games with lives on the line.
A mystical sword stands in the way of the popular coffee store chain Moondollar. Only Jade, Willy, Wing and Nugget can remove the sword by solving ancient riddles and establishing condos for spiders.
A mystical sword stands in the way of the popular coffee store chain Moondollar. Only Jade, Willy, Wing and Nugget can remove the sword by solving ancient riddles and establishing condos for spiders.
Sinclair, Jade, and Claudio receive an invitation to perform at tonight's museum gala. After failing their audition the trio enter the high society event ready to mingle, drink, and uncover plots!?
Sinclair, Jade, and Claudio receive an invitation to perform at tonight's museum gala. After failing their audition the trio enter the high society event ready to mingle, drink, and uncover plots!?
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today. The full length novel adaptation of An Existential Crisis written by T. A. Lore now has an audiobook! This is great news. Now, you can listen to this reality bending adventure as written word. Here is the back of the book and then an audio sample.The back of the book:Entangled realities, temporal tampering, and an interdimensional sphinx: weirdness has run amok in Niqamui where sinister schemes are afoot. When Pidge, Borb, and Nesgrax wake from a strangely realistic dream, all three intrepid adventurers must set forth in search of answers. Unfortunately, in pulling at loose threads, they quickly find themselves ensnared by a more complex mystery than anything they could ever have imagined. In fact, they may be forced to unravel the very fabric of existence in order to escape. They really are in a pickle this time... or at least pickles are somehow involved.You can support us by ordering your copy of the new audiobook for T. A. Lore’s An Existential Crisis at https://www.audible.com/pd/An-Existential-Crisis-Audiobook/B09QMTF8XDHere is the audio sample, read by the narrator:[audio sample here]Once again, that’s An Existential Crisis by T. A. Lore, on audible at https://www.audible.com/pd/An-Existential-Crisis-Audiobook/B09QMTF8XD
Join Stella, Willy and Jade for a boat race on the high seas! Peril, pirates and… powerups(?!) abound!
Join Stella, Willy and Jade for a boat race on the high seas! Peril, pirates and… powerups(?!) abound!
Wing, Simmond, and Willy undertake a smattering of odd jobs to uncover the truth and save the innocent. No dungeon, but dragons aplenty by the end of this exciting installment of Firebreathing Kittens.
Wing, Simmond, and Willy undertake a smattering of odd jobs to uncover the truth and save the innocent. No dungeon, but dragons aplenty by the end of this exciting installment of Firebreathing Kittens.
In a crazy, half-drunken series of events, Cloudio, Jenny, and Stella go on an adventure in Niqamui and the Elysian Fields involving crime, dragons, hoard-growing, and fabulous performances.
In a crazy, half-drunken series of events, Cloudio, Jenny, and Stella go on an adventure in Niqamui and the Elysian Fields involving crime, dragons, hoard-growing, and fabulous performances.
Join Wing, Sinclair, and Cecil as they meet for the first time and make questionable investments, revive asthmatic teen hooligans, and vomit Elf Logs all on the 2022 Firebreathing Kittens Season Premier!
Join Wing, Sinclair, and Cecil as they meet for the first time and make questionable investments, revive asthmatic teen hooligans, and vomit Elf Logs all on the 2022 Firebreathing Kittens Season Premier!
Please listen to this before your first episode. "Hello! In case you're listening to Firebreathing Kittens for the first time and have scrolled to our oldest episode: this is an explanation of what the podcast is, and what you can expect.Q: What is it?A: Firebreathing Kittens is a fictional fantasy audio show you can listen to for entertainment.Q: Who is the intended audience?A: Adults who enjoy fantasy, mystery, friendship filled adventures. Firebreathing Kittens is not appropriate for children.Q: What is Dungeons and Dragons?A: A wise person once told me that Dungeons and Dragons reminded them of storytelling chess. It’s like a strategy game you play with your friends using words. Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D, is a set of math rules people can use to simulate combat. It also involves acting out a role. Players can pretend to be various fantasy creatures and martial and spell casting classes. You can be a wizard, a fighter, or whatever you want. Adventures are coordinated by someone called a “Dungeon Master”, or DM. Here at Firebreathing Kittens, we all rotate through being players and Dungeon Masters, which provides a diversity of DM styles and a rainbow of viewpoints for how different people see the world. It gives everyone a chance to tell their story.Q: Are the adventures sequential? Phrased another way: should these episodes be listened to in a specific order?A: Nope. This is an anthology, not a mandatorily sequential series that you have to listen to from episode one to the end. Each episode has been designed to stand sturdily on its own two feet without requiring the listener to recall any background information from past history to understand the current story. You have the freedom to listen to these adventures in any order you like. Each one has its own beginning and a hopefully satisfying ending.Q: Where should I start?A: Because we have learned how to record better audio over time, we suggest that you start with our most recent season. The older episodes do sometimes have poor sound quality.Q: What if I don’t like one of the adventures?A: If you encounter an episode you don't enjoy? Skip it. Our cast rotates so the players and game master will likely be a different combination of people in the next one you try. It’s the same group of people rotating in different games, but the combination really changes the style and flow of things.Okay, so that’s some questions and answers about Firebreathing Kittens. We hope you enjoy our show!"
What makes 2 brains being better than 1 even better still? When they’re BOTH the Greatest Brains in the Universe (at least that’s what Boltzmann would say). Join Boltzmann, Dr Crud III and Furious Johnson in a truly mind-boggling adventure!
What makes 2 brains being better than 1 even better still? When they’re BOTH the Greatest Brains in the Universe (at least that’s what Boltzmann would say). Join Boltzmann, Dr Crud III and Furious Johnson in a truly mind-boggling adventure!
Murder on the dancefloor! Tanager is locked up, accused of a crime he didn't commit! It's now up to Aaron, Beans, and Olive to prove his innocence, but how will they rescue their friend from a fate worse than death?
Murder on the dancefloor! Tanager is locked up, accused of a crime he didn't commit! It's now up to Aaron, Beans, and Olive to prove his innocence, but how will they rescue their friend from a fate worse than death?
As Jenny develops a strange magical malady, Dr. Crud III, Olive, and Kes try to save her. Boltzmann directs them to the Ner’uk tribe, who may have the cure. Will they stop the clock or will the clock stop them? Join us on an adventure ripe with family, dragons, and discoveries!
As Jenny develops a strange magical malady, Dr. Crud III, Olive, and Kes try to save her. Boltzmann directs them to the Ner’uk tribe, who may have the cure. Will they stop the clock or will the clock stop them? Join us on an adventure ripe with family, dragons, and discoveries!
It’s the annual fighting tournament! Percy, Tanager and Barsook take on the best Niqamui has to offer and experience the highs and lows of battle.
It’s the annual fighting tournament! Percy, Tanager and Barsook take on the best Niqamui has to offer and experience the highs and lows of battle.
Kes, Aaron, and Olive embark on a mission to rescue the lady of the forest from two Fey kings. Utilizing war or love becomes a question of morality, and the nanny is yet again proven to be always right.
Kes, Aaron, and Olive embark on a mission to rescue the lady of the forest from two Fey kings. Utilizing war or love becomes a question of morality, and the nanny is yet again proven to be always right.
A mysterious fog has engulfed Timuli Wood, and only the Firebreathing Kittens can help! Luckily, Boltzmann is on the case, Beans plays hide-and-seek, and Olive turns into a gas!
A mysterious fog has engulfed Timuli Wood, and only the Firebreathing Kittens can help! Luckily, Boltzmann is on the case, Beans plays hide-and-seek, and Olive turns into a gas!
This episode, the team go digging into ancient history as Tobias discovers an aptitude for riddling, Boltzmann learns the true meaning of rock n' roll, and Tanager meets his hero.
This episode, the team go digging into ancient history as Tobias discovers an aptitude for riddling, Boltzmann learns the true meaning of rock n' roll, and Tanager meets his hero.
(NSFW) Olive, Aaron, and Nesgrax embark on a vital quest into a den of evil. Get the girl, slay with fashion, overthrow an evil queen, and kiss the boy all before midnight. Join us on the most dramatic adventure yet with the Firebreathing Kittens.
(NSFW) Olive, Aaron, and Nesgrax embark on a vital quest into a den of evil. Get the girl, slay with fashion, overthrow an evil queen, and kiss the boy all before midnight. Join us on the most dramatic adventure yet with the Firebreathing Kittens.
Boat shopping, evil hunting, cake eating. Percy, Tobias and Olive do it all! Check it out in the latest episode of the Firebreathing Kittens podcast.
Boat shopping, evil hunting, cake eating. Percy, Tobias and Olive do it all! Check it out in the latest episode of the Firebreathing Kittens podcast.
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today.Gareth John Jones has written a full novel length adaptation of the Firebreathing Kittens podcast adventure All Work and No Play that is called Ice Cream Notions and Energy Potions! This is great news. Now, you can find a comfy spot and experience this urban fantasy festival adventure as written word. Here is the back of the book and then a brief excerpt; I’ll read you chapter one.The back of the book:Cults, mystery, comedy, and ice cream: something is wrong in Niqamui again. It all starts with a missing child, but the real danger could be far more insidious.https://books2read.com/u/bpaxaEand it’s also available on amazon, too.Please support us and pick up your copy of Ice Cream Notions and Energy Potions from amazon.com, and tell your friends about us. Thank you!
(NSFW) Dating is tough, especially when you’ve had your mind warped by a powerful creature. Listen as Rollo, Tanager and Olive navigate the waters of romance, magic and their own untapped abilities.
(NSFW) Dating is tough, especially when you’ve had your mind warped by a powerful creature. Listen as Rollo, Tanager and Olive navigate the waters of romance, magic and their own untapped abilities.
Welcome to a very special mini-episode of Firebreathing Kittens, Moving Day! This episode occurs after the events of "The Taxman Cometh" and "Monstercaid For All".
Who'd come out on top, a maniacal brain in a tube wizard with proficiency in carpenter's tools, or three upstanding tax collectors trying to break into his house? Only one way to find out!
Tobias, Aaron, and Beans set out for an old fashioned monster hunt and learn the value of shared resource economies. They meet old friends and a few… not friends who run in fear from an exhibition of skill. #RugLife
Tobias, Aaron, and Beans set out for an old fashioned monster hunt and learn the value of shared resource economies. They meet old friends and a few… not friends who run in fear from an exhibition of skill. #RugLife
What do a taxman, the filthy rich, a paraplegic automaton, the Sea Scouts and a dwarf eating worm all have in common? The Firebreathing Kittens of course! Find out how Furious Johnson, Boltzmann and Dr. Crud III handle them all in our latest episode!
Trailer for The Taxman Cometh: What do a taxman, the filthy rich, a paraplegic automaton, the Sea Scouts and a dwarf eating worm all have in common? The Firebreathing Kittens of course! Find out how Furious Johnson, Boltzmann and Dr Crud III handle them all in our latest episode!
Nesgrax, Olive, and Dr. Crud III travel to the charming-if-odd village of New Braintown to track down the last member of the changeling gang that has been harassing the guild for some time now and discover the true puppetmaster behind the HHO. Did somebody say 'faux-pas'?
Nesgrax, Olive, and Dr. Crud III travel to the charming-if-odd village of New Braintown to track down the last member of the changeling gang that has been harassing the guild for some time now and discover the true puppetmaster behind the HHO. Did somebody say 'faux-pas'?
Suspicion and sabotage are rife in Niqamui as Beans unravels a mystery, Olive has a kitchen disaster, and Aaron does something that absolutely should not be done in real life.
Suspicion and sabotage are rife in Niqamui as Beans unravels a mystery, Olive has a kitchen disaster, and Aaron does something that absolutely should not be done in real life.
An elephant, croc, and brain wake up in jail. Find out why and how they (Dr. Crud III, Olive, and Boltzmann) handle it on this episode of the FBK podcast!
Dr. Crud tries to rescue an artist and his painting from a magical laundromat in Half-Elf Town, while Tanager goes to the Cotton Candy Factory and gets his face painted like a pretty kitty. Olive dabbles in arson.
It's one thing to be unexpectedly transported to space. It's another to have to solve a murder once you get there. Beans, Dr. Crud III, and Olive find themselves on an alien spaceship with no way out. Can they solve the mystery of who killed one of the crew and get home?
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today. Autumn Stevens has written a full novel length adaptation of the Firebreathing Kittens podcast adventure Spring Break that is called Kiss of the Seaweed Hag! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CRY916X This is great news. Now, you can find a comfy spot and experience this under the sea adventure as written word. Here is the back of the book and then a brief excerpt; I’ll read you chapter one. The back of the book: Crud Jr. and The Corinthian stroll down to the beach for some sand castles, sun, and... seaweed hags? Join our heroes in a mystery under the sea. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CRY916X
Sea Snaps, Dragon Thins, Elven Logs, and Ghost Banes? Boltzmann, Cade, and Olive help some orphans revitalize their cookie-selling enterprise and enjoy an evening at the local haunted theater.
Tanager, Furious, and Olive escort enthusiastic proletariat party leader Lucielle to her prom to lead a revolution for the people!
Tanager, Furious, and Olive escort enthusiastic proletariat party leader Lucielle to her prom to lead a revolution for the people!
Dr. Crud III squishes a yorkie, Beans applauds and reassures them that dogs don't have souls, and Rollo gets over his fear of being eaten by Olive the bipedal crocodile; dragons are much larger.
Dr. Crud III, Beans, and Tanager decide that when learning how to make tea, sometimes it works out best when you don't try too hard.
After receiving a rather unusual quest summons, Oryn, Cade, and Olive find themselves soaked and muddy in a far-off land without as much as a guidebook. Have they bitten off more than they can chew? Are they even the heroes their business cards say they are?
Tanager, Aaron, and Olive embark on a treasure hunt with a grand prize of the ultimate treasure: true love. But who deserves that love, and who should have the right to give it? Tune in and see.
Tanager, Aaron, and Olive embark on a treasure hunt with a grand prize of the ultimate treasure: true love. But who deserves that love, and who should have the right to give it? Tune in and see.
Join Dr. Crud, Olive, and Rollo as they work through personal problems, eat pineapple, and solve a murder mystery!
Aaron, Tanager, and Dr. Crud III take on a suspiciously simple quest, only to find their assumptions challenged and their emotions burning hot.
Trailer for Cucurbitacin. Aaron, Tanager, and Dr. Crud III take on a suspiciously simple quest, only to find their assumptions challenged and their emotions burning hot.
It starts as a simple package delivery in the Fashion District, but reveals a regicide lost to time. Can FBK's envoys Tangible, Raincloud, and Olive save the day for a community that is all too quick and willing to judge them?
Trailer for A Perfect FitIt starts as a simple package delivery in the Fashion District, but reveals a regicide lost to time. Can FBK's envoys Tangible, Raincloud, and Olive save the day for a community that is all too quick and willing to judge them?
In a series of cheese fume fueled therapy sessions, Dr. Crud III revisits a childhood fear, Nesgrax examines his abandonment by his family, and Olive pursues wisdom. Too much cheese and too much poop. Ten stars.
Trailer for Emmental TalesIn a series of cheese fume fueled therapy sessions, Dr. Crud III revisits a childhood fear, Nesgrax examines his abandonment by his family, and Olive pursues wisdom. Too much cheese and too much poop. Ten stars.
After giving birth, Dr. Crud, Moka, and Cade try to find two missing persons and an old old lady.
A raven of the White Spire calls out to our band of adventurers: Tanager, Tangible, and Raincloud. The table is set for the mystery to be solved.
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today. T. A. Lore has written a full novel length adaptation of the adventure An Existential Crisis! This is great news. Now, you can find a comfy spot and experience this reality bending adventure as written word. Here is the back of the book and then a brief excerpt; I’ll read you chapter one. The back of the book: Entangled realities, temporal tampering, and an interdimensional sphinx: weirdness has run amok in Niqamui where sinister schemes are afoot. When Pidge, Borb, and Nesgrax wake from a strangely realistic dream, all three intrepid adventurers must set forth in search of answers. Unfortunately, in pulling at loose threads, they quickly find themselves ensnared by a more complex mystery than anything they could ever have imagined. In fact, they may be forced to unravel the very fabric of existence in order to escape. They really are in a pickle this time... or at least pickles are somehow involved. You can find the book on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095MJH24K
A day of fun at the beach and a friendly cooking competition turns sour as Rollo, Meerkat, and Yu-Tung travel through a pint sized world and decide who is worth killing and who should live.
After a year living underground (both figuratively and literally), Nesgrax returns to the fold to recruit a team in order to rescue his uncle, who's being kept in a rather unsavoury place. Will Nesgrax, Furious, and Olive finally learn what the HHO is all about? What on earth does HHO actually stand for? Find out (maybe, who knows?) in The Skaarzborroosh Redemption!
Olive, Aaron, and Zelek take a job from a strange wizard named Dave to retrieve a magical bowl lost to time.
The life of an adventurer is easy. You ride into town, fix a problem, get paid, and leave again. But what happens when you come back a year later and things aren't quite as rosy as you left them? Tornan, Beans, and Dr. Crud III are about to find out...
Romance, Faeries, Hot Tubs, Capitalism. This episode truly has it all. Join Tanager, Raincloud, and Mooses in... Pixie Problem.
Aaron, Riffman, and Sitara participate in a school's sports day that turns sinister, revealing shocking revelations about some familiar faces as we say goodbye to a beloved friend.
After some testy annual review sessions from Nulisag with Dr. Crud III, Beans, and Olive late on a snowy night, a mysterious mechanical construct enters the guild hall asking for protection. More visitors arrive looking for their employer's lost property.
Blursed items and a policeman with a penchant for pottery? Join Tornan, Furious, and Rollo in an interdepartmental cooperation joint task force with the police investigating the city's 1,000th crime of the year.Every episode of Firebreathing Kittens is its own story. The DM and characters rotate, appearing in some shows but not others. Join us on a standalone real play oneshot Dungeons and Dragons quest as we solve mysteries, attempt comedic banter, and enjoy friendship. You can listen to the adventures on Spotify, iTunes, iHeartRadio, YouTube, and more.
Blursed items and a policeman with a penchant for pottery? Join Tornan and two new members; Furious and Rollo as they investigate Niqamui police department's 1000th crime of the year in... Mouse & Teapot: A Love Story.
Giving up on finding a quest at the guild hall, daring adventurers Meerkat and Raincloud find two saddled pegasi just outside their front door. What starts as the mystery of a lost cat turns into the tale of unanswered questions and the sound of half a bell clapping.
Seismic tremors lure Tanager, Olive and Nesgrax back to the underground DGS headquarters. What will our heroes sacrifice to get to the bottom of this mystery... and back up again?
Gregory, Aaron, and Olive fun around in the sun, munching snacks, squashing beef and maybe... even figuring out the conundrum that is romance?Elephant barbarian Gregory, Crocodile monk Olive, and Fishy bard Aaron win boardwalk challenges, compete in The Romance Conundrum, and duke it out against mean girls in beach volleyball.If you like audiobooks then you might also enjoy Firebreathing Kittens. Every three hour episode has a complete plot with an ending. There's mystery, action, comedy, and friendship. You can listen in any order. It's free.
Will Nesgrax, Cliff, and Tornan escape this Groundhog Day-esque time loop? They're taking it one today at a time.
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today. Rachel Lindley has written a full novel length adaptation of the adventure A Bully Good Time! This is great news. Now, you can find a comfy spot and experience this bayou delving adventure as written word. Here is the back of the book:Frogs, boats, and beignets! The Firebreathing Kittens venture to the south of the fantasy world of Guaso to investigate a missing persons case. There's Pidge, a plucky gnome with shapeshifting magic; Moka, an angel's daughter with miraculous healing powers; and Manford, a nihilist and would-be scoundrel with a heart of gold. Within a world of vine-choked cypress and murky water, the three discover unlikely allies, strange philosophies, and danger. They must triumph against the swamp before they disappear themselves. In her debut novel, Rachel Lindley offers a tale of exploration, mystery, and friendship, where the next good thing might be waiting a few steps beyond the river's edge.Please support us and pick up your copy of A Bully Good Time from amazon.com, and tell your friends about us. Thank you!https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Y7XRF3D
How do you make a pirate cry? Gold? Jewels? Or an even more priceless booty? Join Aaron, Cade, and Olive to find out.
Dr. Crud III, Sitara, and Raincloud find themselves trapped in a Groundhog Day-esque time loop. Will they escape? Only TIME will tell!
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today. Autumn Stevens has written a stage play adaptation of the adventure Spring Break, which is called Kiss of the Seaweed Hag! This is great news. Now, community theatres and high school and college drama clubs can perform a rendition of this underwater adventure. Swim alongside The Corinthian and Crud Jr as they dive to the depths of the ocean to investigate a mysterious submerged light source. This two hour stage play will thrill and delight your audiences. The script can also be read as a book or cherished as a collectible on your shelf! Please support Firebreathing Kittens by picking up your copy of Kiss of the Seaweed Hag, the Stage Play from amazon.com, and telling your friends about us. Thank you! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XXWHR6P
When the potions from Nimbin are no longer trustworthy and safe, the Firebreathing Kittens guild sends a team to investigate the problem. Dr. Crud III, Olive, and little Tangible venture north by train and cart to see what is amiss.
It's a twisty-turny time as detectives Harlon, Beans, and Dr. Crud III track down the wait staff of a local restaurant. What could be worming its way through the bowels of the city in this crime procedural drama?
Nesgrax, Olive, and Tanager can't resist an a-peeling contest for a golden apple held at the Niqamui fighting arena by a mysterious woman. Have our heroes been lured in-cider trap? Or will they con-core their enemies?
Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today. Andrew Addessi has written a stage play adaptation of the adventure Lagomorphs in the Labyrinth! This is great news. Now, community theatres and high school and college drama clubs can perform a rendition of this dungeon crawling adventure. Follow the path of Imeri, Amonust, and Elowen as they challenge puzzles and monsters to win the prize. This two hour stage play will thrill and delight your audiences. The script can also be read as a book or collected as a collectible on your shelf! Please support us and pick up your copy of Lagomorphs in the Labyrinth, the Stage Play from amazon.com, and tell your friends about us. Thank you!https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WRCMMDV?pf_rd_r=DJPRBFZ1SW24NWD2V43N&pf_rd_p=5ae2c7f8-e0c6-4f35-9071-dc3240e894a8&pd_rd_r=38c06160-f7f6-4915-9fec-308db5419c31&pd_rd_w=xRbhZ&pd_rd_wg=wHese&ref_=pd_gw_unk
Dr. Crud III, Beans and Olive are sent to a magical island on behalf of a man in a mid-life crisis; definitely nothing weird here...
Dr. Crud III, Tornan, and Olive bodyguard a potato farming homesteader to their new plot of land in the Old West.
Acronyms abound as Nesgrax, Meerkat, and Olive are recruited by the mysterious DGS to foil a suspected museum robbery, thought to be the work of the even more mysterious HHO... Episode content label: Snagglepuss ;)Each episode's plot is self contained, so you can listen to these adventures in any order. The DM and characters rotate, appearing in some shows but not others. Join us on a standalone real play Dungeons and Dragons quest as we solve mysteries, attempt comedic banter, and enjoy friendship. The Firebreathing Kittens oneshot D&D podcast: fantasy, action, mystery, and friendship.FirebreathingKittensPodcast.com
A pacifist, a hedonist, and a cat walk into a mansion. Join Dr. Crud III, Tanager Goodfellow, and Raincloud Moonglow in this adventure of the Firebreathing Kittens.
Firebreathing Kittens Landis, Cliff, and Olive are employed to find the missing daughter of Lady Ashcroft. On their path to victory they visit a raunchy night club, go to the beach (on the plane of fire) and eat a lot of crabs, before facing off against the kidnapper, a nefarious Fire Spirit!
A chance meeting brings together Nesgrax and his Uncle Algenoth. He invites his nephew, Sitara, and Olive to a dinner party aboard his luxury yacht, where something is not quite as it seems...This adventure contains:a luxury yachta butler who can't be sarcastic sir, it's against his contracta gold backless ball gowna sexy lounge singerthat friend from high school who always talked behind peoples' backsan open barmurder
The survival skills of Lorien, Tanager, and Olive are put to the test when a confused and vengeful sea god strands them on a desert island.
Tornan, Silva, and Raincloud are hired for a mission of utmost secrecy: to find and destroy the book "Snooty Mer-Coin". This adventure summarized: First Edition, Birdy Secretions, and Anagramadingdong.
Please listen to this before your first episode. "Hello! In case you're listening to Firebreathing Kittens for the first time and have scrolled to our oldest episode: this is an explanation of what the podcast is, and what you can expect.Q: What is it?A: Firebreathing Kittens is a fictional fantasy audio show you can listen to for entertainment.Q: Who is the intended audience?A: Adults who enjoy fantasy, mystery, friendship filled adventures. Firebreathing Kittens is not appropriate for children.Q: What is Dungeons and Dragons?A: A wise person once told me that Dungeons and Dragons reminded them of storytelling chess. It’s like a strategy game you play with your friends using words. Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D, is a set of math rules people can use to simulate combat. It also involves acting out a role. Players can pretend to be various fantasy creatures and martial and spell casting classes. You can be a wizard, a fighter, or whatever you want. Adventures are coordinated by someone called a “Dungeon Master”, or DM. Here at Firebreathing Kittens, we all rotate through being players and Dungeon Masters, which provides a diversity of DM styles and a rainbow of viewpoints for how different people see the world. It gives everyone a chance to tell their story.Q: Are the adventures sequential? Phrased another way: should these episodes be listened to in a specific order?A: Nope. This is an anthology, not a mandatorily sequential series that you have to listen to from episode one to the end. Each episode has been designed to stand sturdily on its own two feet without requiring the listener to recall any background information from past history to understand the current story. You have the freedom to listen to these adventures in any order you like. Each one has its own beginning and a hopefully satisfying ending.Q: Where should I start?A: Because we have learned how to record better audio over time, we suggest that you start with our most recent season. The older episodes do sometimes have poor sound quality.Q: What if I don’t like one of the adventures?A: If you encounter an episode you don't enjoy? Skip it. Our cast rotates so the players and game master will likely be a different combination of people in the next one you try. It’s the same group of people rotating in different games, but the combination really changes the style and flow of things.Okay, so that’s some questions and answers about Firebreathing Kittens. We hope you enjoy our show!"