Chapter 03: The Rules of the Game

You're already probably familiar with the concept of roleplaying, but just in case, let's go over it again. Roleplaying is a bit like playing a board game and a bit like acting in a movie, but without the board or the script. Players sit around together and act out what their characters are doing and saying, while a Gamemaster or other narratorial type sets the scene, controls non-player characters and adversaries and does their best to keep things interesting. Dice determine what the results of a given action are. All simple and clear, right? Great, let’s play.

Okay, so there's a bit more to running a game than that. Let's talk more, shall we?

As we noted in the first chapter, come game time each player needs a character sheet for their character, a writing implement, some scrap paper and a ten-sided die. Since CharLoft RPG is online, most or all of this can be done online - character sheets can be stored on the Wiki or on personal webpages, edits can be done electronically, notes can be taken on your notepad software of choice, and even the ten-sided die can be rolled using a dicebot. Still, the basics are the same. As for you GMs, you need any notes you've made on the adventure you plan on running, as well as access to this Wiki (if you're reading it now, you're off to a good start), and anything else you think might be handy to know. The rest is done mainly by talking - describing the scene or what the characters are doing or saying. Your job as GM is to describe the situation. For example, you might tell the players, “It’s a beautiful morning in Everytown USA. Too beautiful to be going to school, and yet that’s where you are. First period is about to start. As you head off to your respective classrooms, someone starts screaming in horror. What do you do?” This is where the characters get busy.

The players describe what they are doing and speak for their characters. One might say, “Uh-oh. Something wicked this way comes. I head over to see what’s going on.”

Another could respond, “I rush to my locker and grab my Official Slaying Kit … just in case.”

Most of the time, when a player wants their character to do something, it gets done - talking, walking, walking and chewing gum, leaping up on a table and screaming “spiders!” (embarrassing, but not difficult to do).

Sometimes however, the outcome of an action is in doubt. Just because a character wants to stake a vampire, for example, does not mean the vampire is going to get staked. That's where the dice and those funny numbers on the character sheet come in.

In the Unisystem, a die is rolled when a character is trying to do something important, and when there’s some chance of things going wrong (see To Roll or Not to Roll). You tell the players when to roll and what character sheet numbers to add to the roll. The die roll represents luck and chance; the character sheet numbers are the skills and natural abilities of the Cast Member. The better those skills are, the more likely that the character will succeed. An expert sharpshooter will hit the target more often than someone who closes her eyes and flinches when a gun goes off. Sometimes, luck allows the untrained to succeed, and the expert to fail - that’s where the die rolling comes in.

The basic mechanic:
D10 roll + Attribute + (Attribute or Skill)

Basic Success: 9

D10: A ten-sided die. Higher is better.

ATTRIBUTE: The character’s natural abilities. Use the Cast Member’s Strength to see if he can lift a bag of cement over her head or Dexterity to pick someone’s pocket. In some situations (lifting something for example), only Attributes are used. Usually in those cases, roll and add the character’s Attribute doubled (e.g., if the Cast Member has Dexterity 3, add six to Dexterity-based rolls). In certain cases … say, when footing is treacherous or positioning awkward, no skill is used and the Attribute is not doubled. Those are pretty rare circumstances though. Also, sometimes two different Attributes (no doubling) are used instead of an Attribute and skill. As the Director, this is ultimately your call.

SKILL: The character’s learned abilities. Use Kung Fu to punch someone, or Crime to pick someone’s pocket. Always use an Attribute alongside a skill.

The player announces what her character intends to do. You tell her what Skill and Attribute to add to the roll. The player rolls the dice and adds the Attribute/Skill combo to the result. If the total, after all modifiers, is nine or higher, the character has succeeded. Otherwise, failure-city.

Some actions use only a character’s Attributes; no skills are applicable. Some examples include lifting things (which uses Strength), remembering something (which uses Intelligence), and so on. These situations are known as Attribute Tests, or just Tests.

There are two types of Test: Simple and Difficult. Simple Tests are relatively easy things – lifting an object using your entire body, for example. To resolve a Simple Attribute Test, roll and add the Attribute involved, doubled. For example, a character with a Strength of 2 adds 4 to the roll.

Difficult Tests are more challenging; lifting something with only one hand, for example, makes for a Difficult Strength Test. In those cases, only the value of the Attribute involved (do not double it) is added. This, of course, reduces the chances of success.

Most actions, from sneaking around in the dark to writing the Great American Novel, are considered to be Tasks. A Task always uses one Attribute and one skill. The Game Master decides which Attribute and skill are appropriate to the action at hand. The die is rolled, and the applicable Attribute, skill and modifiers are added to the result. The higher the traits used are, the greater the chance of success.

Sometimes, an action is resisted. This usually happens when the character is trying to do something someone else would rather didn’t happen. If a character is trying to grab some hair from a potential witch’s hairbrush, there is a chance that the girl will notice, for example. Also, close combat is a biggie on the Resisted Action front. Resisted Actions involve two or more characters. Both make their rolls as above. If one succeeds (gets a total of nine or above) and the other doesn’t … well, that’s pretty easy. If both succeed, the one with the higher total wins. If both fail, nobody accomplishes anything. If you still need a comparison, the lower roll fails more. In case of a tie, the defender (if there is a defender) wins; otherwise it is just a tie. Guest Stars and Adversary characters typically use a fixed value (no roll) for their action (the Muscle, Combat or Brains Score); the Cast Member needs to beat those Scores to succeed at the Resisted Action. If defending, the Cast Member needs to beat or tie those Scores.

In some situations, you Director folk need to know more than whether the character has succeeded at something - you need how well he succeeded. When that’s the case, check the result against the Success Level Chart. The greater the number of Success Levels, the better the character did. Some difficult tasks require more than one Success Level.

So what’s the deal with Success Levels? How important are they to the game? What do all those numbers mean, and why should you care? Most of the time, Success Levels don’t matter much. For some things, a result of nine or greater means the Cast Member has succeeded at whatever task was being attempted. Sometimes, however, just doing something is not as important as doing it well, and that’s where Success Levels come in. Let us elaborate.

CREATIVE STUFF: Whether it's a music performance, writing a great novel or telling a good lie - how well the character did it is going to be pretty important. One Success Level is pretty mediocre; he didn’t do anything wrong, but it didn’t look too good. No rotten tomatoes get thrown, but he gets quite a few yawns. If the audience was already hostile or suspicious, whatever was being attempted is not going to work. Two Success Levels is decent - he pulls it off (whatever it is) without a hitch and looked competent doing so. Three Success Levels is a good job - this is where people get real applause and cheers. High fives all around. Four Success Levels gets standing ovations, favorable reviews from most critics, maybe even a record contract. At five and above, he is on fire (in a good way); everything worked perfectly and almost everybody loves what he did.

HURTING AND HEALING YOUR FELLOW MAN: When the character attacks someone, how well he struck influences how much he hurt the target. Add the Success Levels of the attack roll to the base damage of the attack. On the flip side, for uses of the Doctor Skill, each Success Level heals one point of damage.

SPELLS AND POWERS: Magic, in particular, typically requires a minimum number of Success Levels on a roll in order to be cast properly. Failure to attain the necessary unmber of Success Levels may result in a simple waste of time, or may have darker consequences. See the Magic, Psionics, and Metapowers section for more information.

LENGTHY TASKS: Things that take some time (like breaking down a door or lifting something really heavy) may require the Cast Member to get a high number of Success Levels, usually in the 5+ range. Characters can accumulate Success Levels by trying over and over. For example, you might decide that breaking down a sturdy door requires eight Success Levels. A strong Cast Member could roll well enough to get all eight Success Levels in one or two tries, while a wimpier character would take several tries (at one to two Success Levels a pop, it might take four to six rolls before the door breaks).

In addition to skill and Attribute levels, other factors may add bonuses or penalties to the roll. Easy tasks gain bonuses, while difficult and complex ones incur penalties. The astute among you will notice that modifiers are comparable to Success Levels. Negative modifiers make it harder to reach the Success Level needed; positive ones make it easier. But modifiers allow finer adjustments (a +1 bonus affects a roll but does not amount to a full Success Level change). Also, positive modifiers could transform a roll into a success in a way that Success Level decreases can't (as in, once you lower the required Success Levels to one, you can’t go any lower).

The Base Modifiers Table gives some guidelines. In addition to those modifiers, Drama Points can add bonuses to rolls (see The Drama Point System).

Novice GMs should go light on the modifier action; after you have a few games in your backpack, feel free to add them as needed to make things more challenging. In the case of positive modifiers, think carefully about whether a roll is needed or not, bringing us neatly to our next subject …

Die rolls are best only when the situation has some dramatic value and where the outcome is in doubt. Keeping rolls to a minimum allows players to get involved in the story. Generally, if the action is routine or not important, rolling shouldn’t be involved. Also, some things should be so ridiculously easy that making rolls is a waste of time - no need for Perception and Notice rolls to spot a twelve-foot tall demon running down Main Street, for example. Some basic pointers follow.

GOOD TIMES TO ROLL: Shooting a crossbow bolt at a charging vampire; searching a murder scene for clues; climbing a chain-link fence with three rabid dogs or hell hounds - or rabid hell hounds - in pursuit; trying to convince a policeman in a foreign world that you aren't up to anything.

BAD TIMES TO ROLL: Parallel parking; shooting a crossbow bolt at a paper target (unless wagering is involved); searching the bedroom for a missing sock (dirty or not); climbing a chain-link fence with plenty of time and no pressing circumstances; trying to convince the barista to accept your $20 bill for a shot of brandy.

Not every situation is going to be as clear-cut as those described above, but in general, you should try to keep the action flowing. The less time the players spend rolling dice, the more time they can spend getting into their characters and thinking up all those delightful witty comebacks that earn you more Drama Points.

As we said, when rolling is called for, you GM dudes decide what skills and Attributes the player adds to her roll. The skill descriptions in Chapter Two: Building Character provide some guidelines. Here we give you a few more words of wisdom directed at Attributes.

STRENGTH: Strength affects how much damage the Cast Member inflicts in hand-to-hand combat, which is very important in the Fight Loft or wherever else you might want to get into a scuffle. Beyond that, Strength is used when brute force is key. Lifting a heavy object would use Strength (doubled), or Strength and Sports if the character has some weightlifting background. Strength is also used when trying to tackle someone to the ground (use it with Kung Fu or Sports) or when breaking free from someone’s grip (using Strength (doubled) or Strength and Kung Fu, whichever is better).

DEXTERITY: Most physical actions use Dexterity. Dexterity includes both general agility and nimbleness (for use with Acrobatics and Kung Fu) and fine coordination (for things like Crime).

CONSTITUTION: The least-used Attribute in terms of rolls, Constitution comes in handy when the character needs to resist fatigue, injury and disease. For most of those rolls, add the character’s Constitution (doubled). Some Sports rolls (marathon running, for example) use Constitution instead of Dexterity. Constitution also controls things like singing ability (use Constitution and Artist to sing, for example).

INTELLIGENCE: Used in any roll where a character’s memory and intellectual ability are important. It helps in such things as deciphering some ancient mystical text (Intelligence and Occultism) or outsmarting an enemy in a brawl (Intelligence and Kung Fu). Sometimes it is hard to decide whether to use Intelligence or Perception in a roll. Rule of thumb: if memory or thinking ability is the most important element, use Intelligence instead.

PERCEPTION: If the roll requires the character to spot something, Perception is the Attribute to use. It measures how aware the character is of her surroundings. Perception is most commonly used with Notice, but almost every skill can be used with Perception. For instance, Perception and Kung Fu can be used to detect some weakness in an opponent’s fighting style.

WILLPOWER: Willpower is mostly used defensively, but it can also apply to a number of skill rolls. Trying to intimidate others, or avoid being intimidated, would use Willpower and Influence, for example. When casting spells, Willpower is the key Attribute (Willpower and Occultism to perform a ritual).

Just because a character doesn't have a skill (level zero) doesn't mean they won't try to use it at some point. The GM is free to determine whether or not an unskilled attempt has any possibility of success. Swinging a club or pulling a trigger is fairly basic - so even someone with Getting Medieval 0 or Gun Fu 0 can give it a try. However, trying to perform major surgery with Doctor 0, or building a homemade bomb with Mr. Fix-It 0, is asking for trouble, and might just be impossible without a Drama Point.

If a particular task can be attempted unskilled, the GM decides what modifiers (if any) apply as usual. You can leave things as they stand as far as unskilled goes (other modifiers depend on the situation, of course); the player rolls as usual but adds no bonus for his character's skill (since, y'know, zero and all.) That's for the generous. Alternatively, you can give a penalty of some sort - say, between -1 and -5. You could even allow the complex stuff at an even greater penalty (-6 to -10) if the character has some reference material handy, but without Drama Points, that's probably a waste of time. Also, if by some miracle the character does pull it off, he should be limited in the number of Success Levels possible. Decent (two Success Levels) is the most allowed.

Sometimes, people perform feats they should normally not be able to accomplish. By the same token, even the most accomplished person occasionally fumbles or screws up relatively simple Tasks. When a roll (before adding or subtracting any modifiers) comes out as a 1 or 10, there is a chance that something really good or bad is about happen.

On a roll of 10, roll again, subtract 5, and add the result (if higher than 0) to 10. So, if the second roll is 6, 7, 8 or 9, the final result is 11, 12, 13 or 14, respectively. If the second roll is 5 or less, nothing is added and the final roll remains 10. If another 10 is rolled, add 5 to the roll (for a total of 15), and roll again. If a player rolls a string of 10s, she keeps adding 5 to the result and rolling again.

For example, Malcolm, played by Jason, is trying to leap between two buildings, using his meager Strength of 1 and Dexterity of 2. The Game Master imposes a -5 penalty because the two buildings are fairly far apart. Knowing his Cast Member is almost certainly doomed, Jason rolls the bones anyhow. He gets a 10. “Roll again,” the Zombie Master says. Jason rolls a second time, getting a 10! His total roll is a 15 so far, but he gets to roll a third time. This time the roll is a 3 – no effect. The 15, plus Malcolm's Dexterity and Strength, gives Malcolm an 18, which is reduced to 13 by the -5 penalty – enough to be successful. “You leap further than you could have imagined,” the Game Master explains. “For a few moments, you actually feel like you are flying, and then you land well past the building’s edge. You feel shaky and weak-kneed, and you know deep in your heart that you may not duplicate this feat in a hundred years.”

On a roll of 1, roll again, subtract 5, and if the result is negative, a negative roll replaces the first roll. If the result is positive, the roll remains 1. If the second roll is between 5 and 10, the final result remains 1. If the second roll is 2, 3, or 4, the final result is -3, -2 or -1, respectively. If the second roll is 1, the prior roll is replaced with -5, and the player must roll again (applying the same rule).

For example, Robin the police officer, played by Jennifer, is wrestling with a zombie. Robin’s Strength is 4. The fiend she is grappling with is relatively strong, Strength 5. Robin is trying to overpower the undead. Both sides use their Strength, doubled, in the Resisted Test. Confident of her Cast Member's abilities (an 8 against a 10 before the dice hit the table), Jennifer rolls her D10 – and rolls a 1. Her second roll is a 3, resulting in a replacement roll of -2, which gives her a total of 6 (her base 8, minus 2). The Game Master rolls for the fiend. The die roll is a 7, which produces a total of 17. “Your grip slips: the creature breaks free and tosses you across the room,” the Game Master describes. “Grinning macabrely, the monster lunges at you. What do you do?“

To keep die rolling to the bare minimum, the basic rules apply only to Cast Members and (if you so choose) important Guest Stars and Adversaries. Rather than roll for every vampire, demon and high school principal that you plotmasters (much more James Bond than Director, eh?) throw in the path of our heroes, the Guest Stars’ and Adversaries’ Attribute and skill levels are condensed into Ability Scores. The scores are the “roll totals” of those characters. Whenever Cast Members need to fight or outwit these characters, they need to beat the Ability Score number. No dice for them!

Ability Scores are generated by taking the character’s Attribute and skill averages and adding six to the total. Most Ability Scores will be in the 9-14 range, but powerful monsters and skilled Guest Stars may have much higher levels. There are three Ability Scores: Muscle, Combat and Brains.

MUSCLE: This score is used for contests of strength - things like tackles, breaking free from grapples and holds, strangulation and similar brute force situations. Cast Members need to tie or beat the Muscle Score number with their rolls. Muscle is double the Strength level of the character plus six. Some creatures have bonuses for extra limbs (especially tentacles and other creepy stuff).

COMBAT: This is the number used for attacks and defenses. Add the character’s Dexterity level, the average of her combat-oriented skill levels, and six. This score determines the Success Levels of an attack; add those Success Levels to the base damage of the attack. So, if Vamp X’s Combat Score is 17, he has five attack Success Levels; he adds five to the damage of any attack that connects. Nasty critter.

BRAINS: This score applies to all mental and perception abilities of the character or creature. It is used to spot enemies, resist attempts to control or deceive the character, use any magical or supernatural ability, or avoid being baited into a bad situation. It typically uses the average of the character’s mental Attributes (Intelligence, Perception, and Willpower) and the average of any appropriate skills, plus six.

PAR EXAMPLE: You cast a typical vampire foe with Strength 5, Dexterity 4, Constitution 4, Perception 2, Intelligence 2, and Willpower 2. The Muscle Score is an impressive 16 (Strength (doubled) plus six). Combat is a 12 - you decide the vamp’s effective skill in combat is two, plus four for Dexterity and the base of six. For Brains, the total is a 10 - the average of the critter’s mental Attributes is two, with an average skill level of two. If the vampire tries to grapple somebody, he uses the Combat Score + 2. The Cast Member would have to tie or beat that 14 with her roll and modifiers. To punch somebody, Combat is used; avoiding the unpleasantness that is the vamp’s grime-encrusted claws requires a defense roll total of 12 or higher. If our heroes try to sneak past the vamp though, their totals need only be 11 or higher (they have to beat the Brains Score of 10).

CharLoft RPG is meant to be played fast and loose, with a focus on story and fun. For the most part, precise movement actions are not going to be needed. Simply let the characters get where they want to be and move the action along.

Every so often, you may decide that how far a character can move in any given Turn is important. In those cases, add that character’s Dexterity and Constitution together. This result is how many yards the character may move in a second (times five for a Turn). Doubling the sum of Dexterity and Constitution shows how many miles per hour that character can run.

Chases: Movement concerns may also arise during a chase scene. First, you must decide how much of a lead the chasee has on the chaser. We suggest granting +1 per Turn of head start. Then have the two racers perform a Dexterity (doubled), or Dexterity and Sports Resisted Action. The winner gains +1 per Turn. So if the lead sprinter started with a three Turn head start (+3) and the chaser won the first Resisted Action, the lead would be down to +2. Once the lead is eliminated (brought down to 0), the chasee is caught; if it grows to +5, the chasee gets away. Other penalties (wearing high heels to the monster movie) are up to the GM.

Leaping: Wire work, anyone? If you need to know how high or far a character can jump, refer to the Jump Table. With a good running start, double those distances. A Dexterity and Acrobatics roll (or the Combat Score) increases the character’s jumping distance by either one yard (in length) or one foot (in height) per Success Level. This means your average vampire (Strength 5) could easily leap four feet up to grab the edge of a roof ten feet up, or could clear a fifteen foot gap between two buildings; further, or doing so with style, would need a Dexterity or Acrobatics roll.

Climbing: This is accomplished with a Dexterity and Acrobatics roll (or the Combat Score) with modifiers depending on the condition of the surface to be scaled. No modifiers are necessary if good hand-holds are available (climbing up a pipe bolted to the wall); -6 is applied when the wall is rain-soaked marble blocks. Some surfaces, like wet glass, just aren’t climbable. If you need to know how far a character travels in one Turn, multiply the Success Levels of the roll or Score by one yard.

When two or more characters gang together to get something done, it’s usually a good thing. They can fact-check each other, engage in entertaining repartee, and generally share the load. But it ain’t all happiness and comradery all the time. There are times when a weak link can be a big problem.

If the task is long-term or low-tension, such as research or construction, all the participants roll and add their Success Levels together. This is used when each member of the gang has her own work space and communication is easy. If anyone fails, he adds no benefit but also causes no penalty. All that help should make the task go quicker.

Some tasks may have a monumentally high number of Success Levels required (digging out of a collapsed mine, for instance, might require 50 Success Levels, with each hero making one Strength (doubled) roll every ten minutes. It's simple, and it lets you measure how long something takes if there's a dramatic need to do so (the mine is slowly flooding, the air supply is running out, etc.)

It’s not so simple when time is short, distractions abound, or when coordination needs to be precise (say, when casting a spell). In those cases, one person (usually the one with the best chance or in the best position) takes the lead. The others roll separately and contribute a +1 bonus per Success Level to the leader’s roll. The leader adds up all the bonuses and applies them to her roll before determining Success Levels. Messing up can be a real downer; any helper’s failure subtracts three from the leader’s final result.

Sometimes the Cast Members can't kick a monster's butt until they know what it is, what its vulnerabilities are, and even where its butt is. Research, investigation, and computer hacking are an important part of any Series. Most of this dull stuff is done “off-camera” though, as … well, it's often boring and not something worth dwelling upon, in fiction or in gaming. TV shows and movies tend to handle such things in montage or with a quick jump cut, which leads to a simple rule - “When it's on screen, it's Important.” Have the characters roll, figure out how long it’s going to take them, allow them a couple of opportunities to come up with witty lines while doing their research and then give them whatever information (if any) they’ve gleaned.

To research a monster’s identity or find a new spell, use Intelligence and Occultism. The Occult Library Quality is invaluable here - let’s face it, you’re not going to discover the hidden vulnerability of a Cytorrakkian demon in the Encyclopedia Britannica, no matter how long you spend reading it. If the characters don’t have the right books, the research is an automatic failure. You do not have to tell them that though. Failure is part of drama, after all. Then you could be kind and allow the Cast Members to figure out the name of the book or books they need to get the desired information. Oddly enough, securing them requests a bit of a mini-quest with ample opportunities for combat and sarcasm.

Hacking works pretty much the same way, except with Intelligence and Computers … oh … and without the books. Some databases are harder to break into than others, but for some reason fictional universes tend to let even high-school students routinely hack into all kinds of sensitive information, so don’t penalize the characters too much. Just like research, hacking happens off-camera most of the time; don’t waste time with complex cyberpunk flow-charts (unless it's fun for you and your group – which brings up another simple rule, “If It's Fun, It's Worth Playing”).

Other types of research and investigation may use Knowledge or Crime instead of the skills noted above. Then there’s good old-fashioned legwork - asking questions, following people around, beating up sources and so on. Those can be roleplayed, especially if the investigator is likely to get himself (or others) into trouble.

Life in the CharLoft can be downright scary … and that’s on a good day. Whether a character discovers that his date is a flesh-eating insect or sees a vampire digging itself out of its grave, he is likely to freak out once in a while. Most of the time, this should be roleplayed rather than determined by rolls - if the characters encounter a corpse, they can react to it as they will. During potential combat situations though, the fainthearted may freeze for a crucial moment, or worse.

When the big hairy scary happens, the characters have to make a Willpower (doubled) roll (Qualities like Nerves of Steel or Fast Reaction Time help). This is called a Fear Test. Feel free to add modifiers to taste. We’ve provided a handy chart with suggestions. If the result of the roll is nine or higher, the character may be afraid or apprehensive, but he can act normally. If the result is eight or less, he freaks out. Use the Panic Table for inspiration.

For the most part, Fear Tests and their repercussions are reserved for special, climactic situations (where the modifiers are plentiful) and Supporting Characters (with weaker wills). You’ll find Willpower high enough among most characters that little pants-wetting occurs. That’s all part of the heroic thing; people don't always find having their characters panic at the drop of a demon tusk very 'fun'. For those looking for a little more 'horror' and a little less bravery, use Willpower (not doubled) or double the penalties.