To get ready for the game, you need 3 things:
- Basic understanding of the rules
Read this page. Don’t worry if you don’t get everything right away, you’ll easily pick things up as you play, other players and GM will help you out. - Filled in character sheet
Read the character creation rules below. - Other people to play with
Go to our discord community and find a game you can join.
Character Sheet
All you need to know about your character is stored on your character sheet.
Vitality Tokens (VT)
Vitality tokens represent the amount of health and energy you have.
Spend VT to use your Talents and Abilities. Gain VT by using your Traits.
When something hurts you, you lose VT. If you run out of vitality - you pass out, leaving you at the mercy of your enemies.
You can have at most 12VT. You start with 12VT, you restore back to full after you rest between adventures.
Recovering VT
You gain 3VT when acting according to one of your personality traits puts you at risk/disadvantage or introduces a complication that makes the story more dramatic and exciting.
For example: Protecting someone puts your life at risk, following your ideals makes you act against your best interests, your flaw or weakness makes you vulnerable, indulging in your temptations gets you into trouble, you succumb to your fear at the worst possible moment, your eccentric behavior draws unwanted attention.
Talents
Things your character is particularly good at. Without the relevant talent your character is as good at doing things as an average person.
Spend 1VT to use a talent and gain advantage on your dice roll.
Abilities
Extraordinary abilities, cool things you can do. Spells you can cast and the non-magical Skills you can use.
You need to spend VT to use them. The cost of using an ability is represented like this:
Power Levels
Abilities and Items have 4 power levels: Nifty, Cool, Epic, Supreme. Higher level items are more powerful, valuable, and rare.
This is a “Cool” spell, it costs 2VT to cast.
Inventory
In your inventory you carry magic items, potions, weapons, and other equipment.
You can carry at most 12 items. You don’t need to keep track of mundane items (food, regular clothes, ammo, etc.), assume that your character has the items it makes sense for them to have (an archer would have arrows, a thief would have lock-picks).
Trading
There’s no currency. There’s no need to micromanage paying for meals, simple services, a simple room in an inn - they cost nothing. For the powerful and valuable items, you trade.
You can trade 3 Nifty items for a Cool one, 3 Cool ones for an Epic one. Supreme items are priceless and can only be found on adventures.
Character Creation
To create your character you will need to fill in your character sheet.
Make up a name, appearance, and personality for your character.
Pick 4 Talents, 4 Nifty Abilities, and 4 Nifty Items. And you’re ready to play!
Character Advancement
Find new items on your adventures, or receive them as payment for completing quests.
Trade items for more powerful items or books.
Books allow you to learn new abilities and talents. “Epic Spellbook” allows you to learn one Epic spell. “Book of Talents” allows you to learn one new talent.
Custom Powers
You’re highly encouraged to make up your own talents, abilities, and items.
Use the lists of premade ones for inspiration, have fun being creative and coming up with new awesome and unique powers! You can also adapt them from any other game, book, or a movie.
Show your new powers to the GM before the game to make sure that they approve.
Rolling Dice
When you attempt a task that is difficult or risky, the GM can tell you to roll a 20-sided die. If your roll is equal to or higher than the target number (set by the GM depending on the difficulty of the task) - you succeed at a task, otherwise you fail.
On a failed roll, GM can offer you to reroll the dice, at a cost of suffering a negative consequence, setback, complication, or taking a riskier option.
If you roll a 20 - you succeed in an exceptionally spectacular way, the outcome is extremely favourable to you. If you roll a 1 - you fail and suffer a severe setback (lose equipment, take damage, or face some other misfortune).
You can improve your chances by rolling with advantage. That means you roll multiple dice, and take the highest number.
You roll with advantage when you use a talent relevant to the task you’re attempting. If you want to use multiple relevant talents - roll an extra die for each one, up to the maximum of 4.
To roll the dice on our discord server, type following commands in the chat:
!roll- roll a single die.!adv2- roll two dice with advantage.!adv3- roll three dice with advantage.!adv4- roll four dice with advantage.
Combat
Describe how you want to fight, roll the dice, GM will narrate what happens.
Anything that deals damage deals 3VT worth of damage.
Roleplaying Guideilnes
Finally, when you have some free time, come read the roleplaying guidelines. Follow them to get the most out of roleplaying, avoid the most common roleplaying problems, and be the kind of person people like playing with.
Questions/Help
If you have any questions or need any help - send me an email to lumen@playmirage.io, or message me over discord (lumen#7925).