Roleplaying games for beginners, and what nobody explains

What the dice are for

The dice are not there to add randomness for its own sake. They are there so that nobody at the table, including whoever wrote the game, gets to decide whether you succeed. You describe what you are trying, the game names a number you have to beat, you roll, and the result stands. That is the contract, and it is why people who have never rolled a die in their lives find these games grip them: the outcome is genuinely not up to anybody.

Your character is a small set of numbers that lean the dice in your favour. Here there are 6 of them, one per ability, and the rule joining a score to a roll is the only arithmetic worth learning. Ten and eleven are average and add nothing. Every two points above that adds one to your roll and every two points below takes one off, so a score of 16 is +3 to everything you attempt with it and a score of 8 is -1. That is the whole system. You never need to know more than that to play, and neither does anybody at a real table.

The die itself has 20 sides, so it swings a lot more than your character does. A brilliant character has an enormous advantage and no guarantee, which is exactly the right shape for a story. It is also why one bad roll is never the end of anything here: a failed roll costs you, and the game carries on.

The game master, and why there is not one here

In most of these games one person at the table is not playing a character. They are running the world: deciding what you walk into, how hard it is, and what happens afterwards. It is a genuinely great job and it is the reason most people never get to try one of these games, because it wants somebody prepared to read a book, prepare an evening, and then be available on a specific Tuesday. Most groups that fall apart fall apart because that person got busy.

So there is not one here. The server does that job. It chooses the encounter from a pool of 30, it sets the number you have to beat, it rolls every die and it works out what everything costs. Nobody prepares anything, nobody has to be the responsible adult, and nobody sits the game out in order to run it. The trade is honest and worth knowing before you start: a server can be perfectly fair and perfectly consistent, and it cannot be surprised by you.

Which means there is no typing in what your character says. You are never asked to improvise in front of strangers, which for a lot of people is the actual barrier rather than the rules. Every option is written down in front of you with a real number attached, and the choice between them is the game.

The words, in plain ones

Every game in this genre invents its own vocabulary, and it is the single biggest reason people bounce off them. Here is the whole of ours. Read it once and you will not meet a word on this site you cannot decode.

Calling

your job. The sort of person you are, and what you are good at.

Blood

where you are from, and the one odd thing that gives you.

Kit

the things you are carrying.

Hook

your backstory. One thing you did, and what it left behind.

Act

one scene. Something happens, and you decide what you do about it.

Approach

one of the ways of dealing with a scene. Each one uses a different ability.

Reckless

the risky way. Pays the most, costs the most, and only one person may take it.

Signature

your one special move. Once a night, and then never again.

Renown

your score.

Dread

how badly the night is going, for everybody. It only goes up.

Scar

what a failure leaves on you. Worth something later, if you dare show it.

Laurel

a vote you give somebody else at the end. Never yourself.

The Hoard

the prize. Exactly one player gets it.

There are 8 Callings, 8 Bloods, 12 pieces of Kit and 20 Hooks, and all of them are written out in full so you can decide what you want before a clock is running.

What the first ten minutes are actually like

Beat by beat, so nothing is a surprise. 2 to 6 of you open the same link. Nobody signs up.

1. The numbers are rolled, once, for the room

   The server throws 4 dice and drops the lowest one, 6 times, and publishes the result. Everybody at the table gets those same 6 numbers. You are not competing on luck with each other, only on where you put them.

2. You rank what you want, and you might not get it

   Up to 3 choices of Calling, submitted at the same time as everybody else, with one of each per table. Then the same again for Kit, in reverse order, so whoever got first pick of the jobs picks last off the gear. Being denied your first choice is not a bug. It is the first thing in the evening that makes you think.

3. You place the numbers and pick a past

   Six numbers into six abilities, then one Hook. This is the bit veterans of this hobby actually love, and it is over in a couple of minutes rather than an evening.

4. Then something happens, 5 times

   A scene, three ways through it, and 60 seconds to choose. Everybody commits at once and nobody sees anybody else's choice until it resolves. Then you find out what the die did, and what the doors nobody took would have paid.

The two things first-timers get wrong

Spreading the numbers evenly. It feels responsible and it is the worst build in the game. Every scene offers three different abilities, so somebody at the table will be brilliant at any given door. Being adequate at all six means you are the best answer to nothing, and nobody ever hands you the interesting job. Put your highest number somewhere and accept that one of your six is going to be embarrassing.

Playing it safe all night. Failure is not the punishment here. Standing still is. The party shares one Dread number that only ever goes up, and at 3 of it every cost in the game doubles, hesitation included. A table where everybody sensibly takes the safe door is a table where the bill quietly grows until somebody has to pay it. Go through the door early, while it is cheap.

What a browser genuinely cannot do

Worth being straight about, because you will hear this argument eventually and you may as well hear it fairly. The thing a real table has that no piece of software has is permission to try the idea you just had. You say, could I climb the outside instead, and a person considers it and gives you a number. Nothing here can do that. There is a fixed set of options and they were written before you arrived.

A long game is the other loss. Games run over months turn a character into somebody you know, and the payoff for that only exists at that length. This is one night, finished in one sitting, and it does not pretend otherwise.

What you get in exchange is that it happens at all. No preparation, no scheduling, no rulebook, no one person carrying the whole thing, and no evening ruined because somebody cancelled. If you have spent years meaning to try one of these games and never getting past the meaning to, that trade is the entire pitch.

Where to start tonight

If you have nobody to play with yet, start with one of the four daily puzzles. They run the same rules and the same dice, on your own, in two or three minutes, and the one called Muster is nothing but character creation, which is the part you will find out whether you like. If you do have people, open a table and send them the link, and read the full rules while they arrive. It is one page and it has a worked example on it.