Song of Swords Beta 2.0 from Opaque Industries
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Song of Swords Beta 2.0 from Opaque Industries © Zachary Irwin, James Lacombe, 2014. All Rights Reserved. Beta Rules for Song of Swords Roleplaying Game Song of Swords is a fantasy/historical tabletop roleplaying game that emphasizes the harsh reality of battle, the human motivations that drive heroes to adventure and danger, and the gripping narratives that arise from conflict and struggle to provide great roleplaying campaigns. The focus of the game is on enjoyable realism. We have drawn from historical sources and research to create a game with gritty, in-depth combat and arms and armors taken straight from the annals of history. You’ll find no madcap fantasy weapons here, just the goods. Cold steel, the way it was really wielded and worn. Sometimes, though, you may find that truth is stranger than fiction. Whether you play campaigns set in our own history or in the far-flung realms of fantasy, the grounded realism of Song of Swords will bring you straight into the game and make you feel each tooth-jarring blow and battle-cry in your bones. The system is D10 based and highly modular, facilitating campaigns from historical fiction to low-magic realism to robust fantasy. A core fantasy setting our own creation, called Tattered Realms, will be included in the core book alongside a guide to playing in 15th century Europe, and many expansions and supplements are to follow, detailing new venues for your games and providing resources for your own creations. The first production of Opaque Industries, Song of Swords is to be our flagship product, the foundation upon which our company is built, and the core of our productive enterprise. We have put our souls into this game, and we hope you enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed making it. [The art assets are not final and do not reflect the final product.] Lead Designer: James ”Rome” Lacombe Executive Designer, Producer: Zachary T. Irwin Supplementary Design Team: Daniel Leiendecker, Forrest Phanton, Taylor Davis Art Director: Taylor Davis Cover Art: Kenneth Solis Book Art: Darren Tan, Frankie Perez, Duc Pham, Taylor Davis, Kassandra Swager Additional Development: Justin Hazen, Travis Thomas, Alex Gann, Nicholas Henry, Alan Baird, The Four Cells, Dusan Nadimakovic CEO: Zachary T. Irwin All contents copyright © 2013-2014 by Zachary T. Irwin, James T. Lacombe. All rights reserved. This book is dedicated to Daniel Paris. Special thanks to our families, friends, teachers, Bret Sweet , Sherri Paris, Kenneth Solis, Charlie Krank, Nicholas Nacario and our fans met on /tg/ and other places. opaquegames.com www.facebook.com/OpaqueIndustries opaque.freeforums.net Introduction [#1] [Note: write this last] Chapter 0 What is Song of Swords? Mago laughed despite himself as he vaulted the barricade. The routing nomads were scrambling to reform in their makeshift wagon fort. Mago landed before a man struggling with the match of his arquebus. The man looked up. With an exultant whoop, Mago drew his saber and cut the man’s right arm off at the elbow in the same motion. The limb fell, its fingers still holding the powder-horn, and Mago walked past, pushing the man out of his way just as he began to scream at the stump of his own arm. A lancer approached, and Mago wove out of the way of the polearm, two-stepped forward, and snapped out with a cut that caught fingers between blade and haft, cleaving all of the digits from the spearman’s forward hand. He barked aloud in wordless triumph, and swept in to hammer aside a high blow from another swordsman. Grasping his foe by the collar, Mago saw his face. Little more than a child, brown eyes wide, mouth moving in wordless fear. Mago blinked, and then caved the boy’s head in with three terrible blows from the spiked pommel of his sword. He threw the corpse away, and flung himself into the melee, as his brothers closed the net. The slaughter was absolute, men who had raided and pillaged Dacian land for years died on their knees, begging for Dacian mercy. Mago brought his sword down, cleaving a pleading nomad’s head down through to the teeth. He wrenched his sword free and flung his arms wide. There were no more left to kill. The Fighting Volkodavs howled in triumph on a mountain of corpses. A gunshot rang out. Mago heard someone scream. The voice sounded familiar. Then he hit the ground. White-hot pain erupted from his upper thigh, where the bullet had struck him in the back. He realized that he was screaming, and all at once it hit him. The cold mud in his hair, on his face. The clawing agony in his leg. He knew that he would live, somehow. Limping for life, but alive. He forced open his eyes, through the tears of pain, and scanned the perimeter for the source. Who? he tried to breathe through gritted teeth, pain and fury foaming in his mouth. Who shot me? I must know, he felt a tooth crack as his eyes settled on the source of his ruin. The one-armed man, pale from loss of blood and fading fast, grinned over the smoking barrel of his arquebus. Song of Swords is a historical and fantasy tabletop role-playing game that puts its emphasis on realism. It's a game about intense life or death conflicts, adventure with peril around every corner, deep stories, involved characters, and no holds-barred combat. Song of Swords isn't a game with hit points or ablative health. Here, injuries are devastating, debilitating, and dead-serious affairs. Even blows that don't kill immediately can kill with blood loss, or infection from sloppy treatment. Injuries survived can leave limps, lameness or even crippling disability. Your armor can protect you, but so can your speed and mobility, quick wits, and skill at arms. You decide your characters' goals, and through the use of the Arc Points system, your character grows by following the goals that you decide for him, in addition to those chosen by the Game-Master to give structure to the game's narrative. Violence may be a means to an end, but its danger means that you must pick your battles wisely, instead of charging headfirst into every combat situation. These elements combine to create a game in which the heroism of the characters is genuinely heroic. When even one slip-up can mean dismemberment or death, it takes real courage to face danger, and courage is what heroes are made of. This isn't a game for the faint of heart. Whether you fancy a campaign as 15th century Englishmen fighting in France under Henry V, or a desperate last stand against the Mongols in Hungary, Song of Swords can provide your Historical role playing experience. Or perhaps you’re more interested in fighting Grues in the hideous depths of the Kaselreich, or fighting Goblins in the brutal tunnels of Cross Way beneath the iron hills of Dace. Again, we’ve got you covered. Welcome to the Song of Swords. What is a Roleplaying Game? A roleplaying game like Song of Swords is a game in which the players assume the “roles” of their characters and go on adventures with them, using their combined imagination. One player, the “Gamemaster” or GM, is in charge of running the game, playing the minor characters (Non-Player Characters, or NPCs) and guiding the players in their adventures. To add tension and fun to the game, dice are rolled to decide the outcome of certain events like combat, dangerous acrobatics, stealth, and so on. As characters survive their adventures and overcome obstacles, they grow, becoming more capable and skilled. The rules in this book are here to help make sure everyone has a fun roleplaying experience, the Song of Swords way. Remember, the goal here is to have fun! Basic Mechanics Explained Song of Swords works on a simple Die Pool system, using only 10 sided dice, or d10s. Remember, whenever rolling is required, it will always be d10s that you will roll. Whenever there is a situation in which a character must accomplish a task that has some chance of failure, or that is reliant upon his own abilities for degree of success or failure, this is done through rolling dice. Basics of the Die Pool Rolls are simple affairs. You have a number of dice (a “Pool”) that you roll against a “Target Number” or “TN.” Each die in the pool that surpasses this TN is a Success. Most rolls will have “Required Successes,” meaning the number of Successes necessary for the rolling character to win or succeed the test. And that’s it, it’s as simple as that. This kind of roll is called a “Check.” Basic Check A Check is where a character rolls a Pool, decided by one of their Attributes or Skills or some other factor, against an RS. The TN for these checks is always 7. The RS is decided by the GM, who analyzes the situation and the rules, and decides the appropriate RS according to the rules or his own judgment. Attribute Checks usually use a single Attribute as the Pool. So, a Strength Check at RS 3 would involve a character rolling a number of dice equal to their Strength at TN 7. If they got 3 or more Successes, then they would succeed the Check. Skill Checks use a character’s Attribute plus the appropriate Skill’s Skill Level to determine the Pool. Skills are detailed in their own Chapter, but the principle for rolling them is exactly the same as with Attribute Checks.