Firebreathing Kittens

Rewind To Remember (Tales From The Loop)

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. 

Trailer for Rewind To Remember

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

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.

Spring 2025 TTRPG Rules Mechanics Feedback

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).

See Path My Father (TSRPG)

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. 

Trailer for See Path My Father

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. 

Alastair Marril Interview

Alastair Marril Interview

Creepy Kralas (Trapped In An Endless Ikrala)

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. 

Trailer for Creepy Kralas

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 Trapped In An Endless Ikrala

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.