Firebreathing Kittens

Trailer for Just Trying To Pay Rent

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

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 (Black Powder and Brimstone)

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. 

Trailer for Rock The Boat

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. 

Were There Be Sharks (Outgunned)

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? 

Trailer for Were There Be Sharks

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? 

Sharky Seas (Outgunned)

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.

Trailer for Sharky Seas

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

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.

Bodies Botany And Bleeding Hearts (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.