A downloadable RPG

A role-playing game. Interpret your choices and dice rolls in challenging and narratively interesting ways. This is a game to make your own and to incorporate you and your friends' preferences.


If you're interested in my design decisions and thoughts while making this, here's a deeper dive into the choices I made:

  • Priority was given to the overall aesthetic and design rather than specific mechanics or rules.
  • I love the "roll 3d6" feel when creating a character and I wanted to keep that feeling. To accomplish this and still fit within the space, I chose to do 2d6+1d6 for health and items. I liked the simplicity and familiarity of rolling 3d6 to create a character, so choosing two for your health and one for your items made sense.
  • I wanted to keep some normalcy with the Explore and Encounter concepts. 1-in-6 chances for Exploration stuff and 2d6 for Encounter reactions.
  • I decided to completely drop the typical ability score/modifier generation, and go with a situational 3d6 ranged outcome when executing actions. This felt perfect because 3d6 ability scores are commonplace, and it also fit right in with the progression of the previous ranges... 1d6 Explore, 2d6 Encounter, 3d6 Execute.
  • Health regeneration: Health isn't just "meat points" to me. It makes sense to fully replenish your health after taking reasonable measures to rest and recover. I also just like the freedom and simplicity of fully recovering when you and your party are ready to do so.
  • Attacks and damage: I like leaving the determination of a successful or failed attack open-ended. If you're actively in a fight and trying to attack, you're going to hit and do damage...so just attack and roll damage. If it is uncertain, roll 3d6 and determine how well that attack was executed. Simple and makes sense to me.
  • Item usage: I like usage die for consumable item management like torches and stuff. Conveying the classic usage die concept proved to be really hard in this format, so I decided to link usage of consumable items to the 1d6 Exploration rolls. I like how simple it is: if you're using a consumable item, then it will be expended on low Exploration rolls.
  • Magic: I chose to use a simplified version of my "Rogue Magic" system that I made for Rogueland. I like magic to be free-form and uncertain, so the resulting effects are open-ended and interpretable. I want to keep most of the spell casting mechanics up to the reader and allow for people to bring in their own assumptions and preferences with how magic works and where it comes from.


**Printer friendly and color variants are included in the pdf.

Physical copies available at:

StatusReleased
CategoryPhysical game
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(16 total ratings)
AuthorCaverns of Heresy
GenreAdventure, Role Playing
Tagsfkr, OSR, Tabletop, Tabletop role-playing game

Download

Download
Spoor.pdf 7 MB

Comments

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Great design, seems like a helpful guide for some FKR nonsense - I just had to get the physical card!

(+1)

Fantastic! An RPG in 70 words that fit on a business card, and is also a complete system for an OSR-esque/fantasy game. It is one of the most elegantly designed games I've seen!

Love the game! Very good idea and a great execution

(+1)

So, in combat, low Execute roll results in taking 1d6 damage? Want to keep rolls entirely player-facing, but wasn't clear on what the intention for taking damage actually was in the design.

Hi, I came to your game from Twitter. I love the art style: it is so beautiful! I also think the game design choices are very interesting. However, I have some doubts. Maybe you designed exactly to be like this: open-ended. Anyway, I'd like to ask anyway:

- What do you mean by execute?
- The idea is to roll d6 to determine whether the arcane action was a success or a failure?

Thank you for sharing such nice minimalist game!

Looking forward to the reply, also to playtest. <3 

(+2)

Hey there! Yes, the game is totally meant to be open-ended and interpreted in a way that you feel is appropriate and useful. I've purposefully chosen to lean more toward the design and aesthetic than specific mechanics or rules.

- By "Execute", I mean "perform an action" or "do a thing". When your character tries to do something and there are unknowns about how the situation would play out, roll 3d6 to see how poorly or perfectly the attempt was. These ranges are purposefully vague to allow for open-ended and reasonable on-the-fly decision making.

- The magic table is a free-form spell creator. When casting a spell, roll 2d6 to determine the action and object of the spell. For example, you may roll "Summon/Create" and "Mind/Senses", which you could interpret as "I gain the magical ability to sense the presence of trolls." Everything else is left up to you to determine how, when, and all that stuff occurs with magic. Do spells come from wands? scrolls? innate abilities? how successful are they? does it do damage? or heal? All of this is for you to play with and do what you want with.

(+1)

Thank you soooo much for the Feedback. I'll share this game with my friends and the FKR groups that I participate. I  believe that it will fit perfectly with the idea of "Play worlds, not rules"

(+1)

Yep no problem! Hope you have fun. Also just a heads up that I updated the main description to include my thoughts and design decisions while working on this.