What This Game Offers
My aims in this project have been:
- Make the rules simple.
- Allow players wide latitude in character creation and advancement.
- Provide a gritty and realistic—if not dramatized—framework.
Simple Rules
Nothing turns most people off like complicated rules.
Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate simple game rules.
This game doesn’t use character attributes. Instead—as its namesake suggests—there are only Skills.
Each Skill is rated from Level 0 (untrained) to Level 6 (legendary training).
When the gamemaster calls on a player to make a roll, he or she tells the player which Skill applies, and the player rolls 1 six-sided die per Skill Level. (Players with 0 Skill Levels in a Skill, or a total of 0 or fewer dice because of penalties can still make a risky “Luck” roll).
The dice result is compared to a Target Number set by the gamemaster. If the roll result is equal to or greater than the Target Number, the attempt succeeds; if it’s less, the attempt fails.
It’s that easy.
This simple mechanic underpins the entire game. To grasp it is to understand 90% of how the game’s mechanics work.
Character Creation and Advancement
Characters do not have classes or levels.
Instead, at character creation, players are given Skill Levels to apply direction to their Skills and a few options about Talents (special abilities) and Magic.
It’s up to the player to decide how and what to make of his or her character.
Likewise, character advancement is totally dependent on both the player’s intention for his or her character and the direction of the campaign.
Boundaries due to class and level are removed. If characters dedicate themselves to certain Skills, abilities, or Spells, they can be learned.
Grit and Realism
“Realism” and “fantasy” often aren’t spoken of together.
“Realism” in this context means “what a fantasy world—given the rules for the setting—would be like if it really existed.”
Fantasy people bleed when they are cut. They feel fear, sadness, happiness, and anger. There are real consequences to people’s actions. And the world has constraints: economic, political, and social.
Players of this game will find that coin is rare, and people live for the large part in grinding poverty (much as a medieval-era populace would). There aren’t hordes of riches lying about in dungeons and even a successful band of player characters must be mindful of their supplies and finances.
They will also note that combat is super deadly. This will encourage players to find peaceful—or diplomatic or deceitful—solutions to their problems. Even a veteran warrior can be cut down by a single well-placed sword stroke.
Inhabitants of the fantasy realm are also swayed deeply by religious, familial, and political bonds that to them—much like to real people in our world—are unbreakable and permeate, whether consciously or unconsciously, every decision they make.
While playing this game, try to imagine that given the fantastical circumstances of the setting that you and your fellow adventurers are actually playing in a real living, breathing world inhabited by real people who face the same constraints and have the same aspirations as we do in our lives.
Assumptions
When writing this rulebook, I’ve made a few assumptions about you, the reader:
- You’ve played a tabletop roleplaying game before or you know someone who has (who can teach you the unspoken basics).
- You need less of the handholding and fluff contained in many other roleplaying game rulebooks.
There is less explanation about how roleplaying games in general work (playing a character, what your character can do, who the gamemaster is and what he or she does, etc.) and more about this particular set of rules as they fit within the pantheon of roleplaying games.
A Word About Magic
Much is said about magic as it applies to this game in a later section dedicated to that topic.
For this introduction, we will suffice it say that magic is a rarity in the settings for this game. So much so, in fact, that most people who live in a world where magic exists either do not believe in it or see it only as a rare display of divine power from the gods and their worldly emissaries.
Magic is the stuff of legend. Magic is as likely to be viewed with revile and suspicion as it is with awe and reverence.
If player characters are to have magic, it may be best for them to keep their power a secret.