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Races Other Than Humans Exist Song of Swords Beta 1.9.1 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 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 Designer, Producer, Layout: 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 & Beta Talk It’s been an adventure getting here. A full year of open development with some of the finest men and women I have ever known, and we’re still not done. Song of Swords began as a pipe-dream, a continuation of a legacy of gritty fights in multiple systems. From its humble gladiatorial roots, it has become what it is today, a rarity in today’s increasingly abstract and narrativistic Indie RPG market: A crunchy tactical RPG with an emphasis on realism, detail, and fun gameplay. This is a game where no punches are pulled. Characters who are injured suffer wounds that debilitate or kill, and even if they don’t prove immediately fatal, there’s still infection, sepsis, poor healing, and possible permanent disfigurement or maiming to worry about. It’s a game that demands that you approach combat with caution, but that punishes indecision. It requires courage, but suffers no foolhardiness. Whether you’re looking for a hard-nosed historical campaign or a serious reimagining of classic fantasy where all the nonsense is done away with, and sensible people wear bloody helmets, this is the game for you. Now, this might not be the most complete Beta ever released. We’re a young company of inexperienced designers. We went into this with —and I mean this literally now—no idea what we were doing. We had only the advice of an alcoholic 30-something Serb we met in a Greyhound station to go off of, and now look where we are. It was a recipe for disaster, but what came out of the oven was the best fanbase any game has ever had, and a game that, while not perfect, is miles ahead of what we expected to produce. And we’re not done yet. The next part is up to you. After this Beta, and possibly one more update in response to criticism, we’re going to move to the Kickstarter phase of our grand publication plan. Crowdfunding is the business model of the future, but a lot of people are (rightfully) skeptical of it because of the ease by which it can be exploited by unscrupulous individuals. The fact of the matter is, for a game to succeed in this day and age, it needs artwork. Quality art isn’t cheap. There are licensing fees, registration fees, printing costs. We want to release the best game possible, but we can’t do it alone. We need your help, so if you want to be a part of it, check out our Facebook page for information on our Kickstarter when it rolls out March 21st, and donate if this is the sort of game you want to see more of in the years to come. So check this Beta. Rip it to shreds. Give us both barrels for every syllable out of place. Feel free to Email us with specific complaints (or, if you’re feeling bored, condemnations of our incompetence), But when the kickstarter comes, please support us if you like what you see. I suppose this should end with a quote from somebody. “Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.” -Thomas Sowell ...Wait, don’t print that. -Jimmy Rome & the Lads Chapter 0 What is Song of Swords? Mago laughed despite himself as he vaulted the barricade. The enemy was broken, and this was their last bastion, but his unit had caught them here before they could reform. 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. They got what they asked for. 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. 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 disabilities. 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.
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