DIE RPG BETA V1.3

DIE RPG BETA v1.3 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1) RULE CHANGES 2) ADVANCEMENT 3) RUNNING THE ARCHETYPES (ERRATA & ADDITIONS) RUNNING THE MASTER RUNNING THE GODBINDER RUNNING THE FOOL RUNNING THE NEO NON-MASTER ANTAGONISTS NON-PLAYER ARCHETYPES 4) SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL DIE: DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME (WE KILLED A KOBOLD AND TOOK ITS STUFF) DESIGNER NOTES 5) HANDOUTS (CHARACTER SHEETS & REFERENCE) CHARACTER SHEETS GM SHEETS, CHECKLISTS AND CHEAT SHEETS KIERON GILLEN © 2020 ART BY STEPHANIE HANS Copyright © 2020 Lemon Ink Ltd & Stéphanie Hans Studio. All rights reserved. DIE, the Die logos, and the likenesses of all characters herein or hereon are trademarks of Kieron Gillen Ltd & Stéphanie Hans. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (except for short excerpts for journalistic or review purposes) without the express written permission of Lemon Ink Ltd & Stéphanie Hans Studio. All names, characters, events, and places herein are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or places is coincidental. Representation: Law Offices of Harris M. Miller II, P.C. ([email protected]) INTRODUCTION v1.3 Hi again. As I said last time, I suspect this is the last of the Beta add-ons for DIE, at least in terms of new major content. It basically completes what I consider the core DIE Beta experience. It takes the form of the previous update, in terms of working as an errata to what already exists in the main manuals. This release also includes what was in the 1.2 release, with some more tweaks. The character sheets entirely replace those in the previous edition. The main new areas in this are… 1. A full Master class, which can be played by any player, GM or otherwise. 2. The option to make a non-Master class be the antagonist. 3. A remixed Godbinder. 4. Some minor rule tweaks for things like Specials and a new Initiative system. 5. A new easy-to-run basic scenario for DIE. 6. The Emotion Knight has all levels of creative violence accessible at the start of the game, and access to their stances and Venting (which is what we’ve renamed Greater Abilities). 7. The NPC archetype rules that were in the comic, tweaked to work with current rules. 8. Advancement tweaks, including Master advancement. As I said, if there’s more releases for DIE in this open Beta stage, they’ll likely be fixes for what’s released rather than big new content. The push of the work now is on making the campaign game work – or, rather, making it work properly. At the time of writing, I’m 32 sessions into my first full DIE campaign, and we’re approaching the end game. It’s giving me a lot to fold back into the design. We’re having a lot of fun. There are a lot of emotions. Also, the Fool character just tried to punch the Fair in the balls. The full release of DIE, if it goes ahead, will be a big step forward - the Campaign Mode is significant, to say the least. It’ll also include a lot of reworking through the whole text. Some changes are the sort of fundamental tweaks that are just a lot of leg work. I may need to change how we describe Difficulty in game, which basically means reducing the difficulty of all challenges by 1, which means going through the whole book and changing every single one. That’s not worth it right now, right? Same with some other small changes of terminology. Especially as I’m not sure I want to do this - there are costs as well as benefits. That said, I think I’m within a breath of being able to actually hand the game to another designer who can look at what I’ve done and then make more stuff in that template. That excites me hugely. Thanks everyone for playing this. It’s been everything. Kieron 11.12.2020 RULE CHANGES SPECIALS INITIATIVE Specials now work in the following way, changing We’ve changed up Initiative, as Initiative was the core mechanic. These changes have been rubbish. worked into the character sheets, and the cheat sheets. Each character rolls their Dexterity dice pool and states the sum total of the dice rolled. This is one Any dice that rolls a 6 can be used to activate any exception to the core mechanic. The GM does the relevant Special. Each Special can only be applied same for each group of combatants they control, once per roll to any individual target, unless noting their sum totals. All the combatants of the otherwise stated. same sort act at the same time. For example, Trevor the Knight has a Special on The results are then arranged in order, from the his attack which says “this hit counts as two hits”. highest total to the lowest, with the highest going He attacks the mean old orc, rolling a 6, 4 and a 2. first. This is the Initiative order. The orc has a defence of 1, so he would normally do two hits (the 6 and a 4). However, the 6 can If a player’s and a GM-controlled character’s activate the Special, counting as two hits. He does totals are equal, the player’s character acts first three hits. If he had rolled a 6, 6 and a 2, he would in the order. If players roll identically, their order is have still done three hits. Any individual Special ascertained in clockwise order from the GM. For ties can only be applied once. If he had a second of the GM-controlled characters, the GM decides relevant Special, he could have used the second which order GM-controlled characters act in. 6 to activate that. Basically, number of successes didn’t give This means Specials are now less “swingy” in enough of a spread to give a meaningful order. impact. They’re a bonus, but an Emotion Knight With reluctance, I’ve been doing this. I hate rules rolling two sixes isn’t going to just kill basically exceptions. I hates them forever. everyone. It’s also worth noting that the rule says you can apply the Special on any individual CASTING SPELLS OFFENSIVELY affected, so if you are (to choose one example) casting a spell that affects many people in an Note: this is a rule which was originally in the area, if you rolled sufficient sixes, you could apply Godbinder’s section. It’s being moved here as it’s the same Special to each of them. used for Masters’ and Fools’ spells as well. For example, Phillipa the Pyromancer is throwing a When casting spells, Scripture, or anything where fireball at a group of mean old orcs. She rolls 6, 6, a character must roll a dice pool to see if a spell is 3, 3. As each orc has a defence of 1, each orc will successful, which is also used to directly attack suffer two hits. However the fireball has a Special or affect a target, the dice pool is simultaneously of “Set orc on fire. They suffer one hit at the start compared against both the spell’s Difficulty and of each of their combat rounds until extinguished.” the target’s Defences. She uses the Special to set two orcs on fire. What she couldn’t do is set one orc on fire, twice. For example, Gareth Godbinder casts a fireball (Difficulty 2) at a group of Fallen (Defence 1, so As a final note, if a player has access to two Difficulty 1). If Gareth rolls two successes, they identical Specials from different sources, they can cast the spell and hit the Fallen, as the number activate both those Specials on the same target. of successes matches or is higher than both the casting Difficulty (2) and the Fallen’s Defence (1). If Basically, wing it. Gareth rolled only one success, they would fail to cast the fireball (Difficulty 2) so no Fallen would be Throughout playtesting DIE, I’ve found myself harmed. thinking of one of Elmore Leonard’s rules for writing: “Leave out the parts that readers tend to DAMAGE skip.” I suspect the same is true for game design. If there’s a rule even I’m not using, why the hell is Just lose the “take disadvantage at low health” it in the core rules? stuff unless you’re running a particularly realistically styled game. Add disadvantages if BASIC SCENARIO DESIGN there’s a described narrative effect which seems especially relevant. In the initial encounter, have the players face a number of Lesser Fallen equal to the number For example, Violent Trevor is in a fight and of players (i.e. no Greater Fallen). Players are we describe his hands being hit beneath a significantly more fragile now. hammer blow from a mean ol’ orc. He is down to 1 Health. In previous games of DIE, he’d be on 2 Note - this Beta includes a pre-generated disadvantages, but we’ve decided that is just no scenario which is an easier way to play a first fun. However, shortly later, Violent Trevor tries to game. pick a lock. The GM thinks the fine motor control required from this may be a good time to throw a disadvantage in. ADVANCEMENT As initiated in DIE 1.2, DIE starting characters Most of the choices on the sheet are explanatory, have significantly less power (both in terms of expanding the options the players pick from their raw power and flexibility).

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