Roleplaying Games
Feral Low
exploratory lonely scifi: John Beynon meets Joe Dever
Six years ago, a team in the Arctic discovered that the horizon had become unsecured from the land. This year, we have been able to replicate this effect across the entire globe.
You’re going to explore what’s through that gap.
CHARGEN
You’ve three stats: skill, endurance, and fortune. Each is determined by rolling D6+4.
You’ve also three areas of expertise. These can be created personally or rolled on the tables below:
- advise, assist, change, discern, discuss, dream
- duty, endurance, evaluate, finance, flirt, focus
- fuel, harmonise, hide, intensity, joy, language
- nurture, panic, patience, process, question, rage
- rescue, secrecy, seek, sequence, soar, soften
- speech, supply, support, sustain, wariness, worship
Increasing your stats
Each time you eat a hearty meal, increase your endurance by one. You cannot chain multiple meals together.
Whenever you roll a six, increase your fortune by one.
None of your stats can be increased beyond ten.
Reducing your stats
Your skill will almost never change. Your endurance depletes during combat and as a result of environmental strain. Every time you test your fortune, it decreases by one.
Testing your stats
When you are testing your capacities independently, roll a single D6.
You want to roll low. The test fails if you roll:
- 2+, if your stat is 0–5
- 3+, if you stat is 6–8
- 5+, if your stat is 9+
Each time you test fortune, decrease your fortune by one after the roll. (If that roll was a six, instead increase your fortune by one). You test fortune when the odds are against you. If one of your areas of expertise covers the topic of the test, you may instead test your skill (which does not decrease as a result of your roll).
You’ll test endurance when you are struggling against the environment or your own capacity.
Combat
When you engage violently with someone else, first determine the combat ratio by deducting the target’s skill from your skill. This number may be negative and is unlikely to change throughout the combat.
Roll D6 + combat ratio.
Your target loses endurance equal to this total. You lose endurance equal to five minus this total (subtracting a negative value increases the result).
If it would be important to determine who acts first, the smallest group (or the group most at home) will be the first to act.
Reaching zero ENDURANCE
Characters with a fortune score test their fortune when reaching zero endurance. Failure means death. Success means survival. Any further damage triggers another roll.
Characters without a fortune score die when their endurance reaches zero.
Death from massive damage
If a character takes eight damage in a single attack, this will kill them. Characters with fortune scores may test to survive.
Antagonist statistics
If using creatures from Advanced Fighting Fantasy, Troika!, or Quarrel & Fable, skill is identical to its namesake and STAMINA becomes endurance. If the creature is narratively important, give them a fortune score equal to their skill.
If using creatures from B/X and similar games, roll XD6 where X = HD. Combine the two highest values to determine skill and double the value of the highest dice to determine endurance. If the creature is narratively important, give them a fortune score equal to their HD or their morale (if they have one).
Features of the place beyond the horizon
to be continued!
