What is Cool Name RPG? #
Cool Name RPG is a roleplaying game system that lets you and your friends tell fantastic stories where down-to-earth heroes with a handful of exceptional abilities travel to wondrous places for action-packed adventures. Your heroes will risk life and limb negotiating difficult obstacles, overcoming daunting challenges, and vanquishing deadly foes to accomplish extraordinary goals.
Down-to-earth heroes: In a Cool Name RPG adventure, players take on the roles of characters in a fantasy setting who are on the power scale of your favorite artifact hunting archaeologists, wandering barbarian swordsmen, English super spies, or renegade starship crew members seeking serenity.
A handful of exceptional abilities: Each character will have a few exceptional abilities. These could include things like fantastic luck, amazing martial arts skills, incredible endurance, the ability to kit-bash gear out of a pile of junk, or even talent with magic.
Travel to wonderous places: Over the course of their adventures, your characters will travel to wonderous places like ancient temples, secret strongholds, floating castles, or even other worlds or dimensions. As your adventure begins, your characters will leave the normal world behind to explore these strange and exciting locations.
Action-packed adventures: The pace of a Cool Name RPG game is along the lines of your favorite action-adventure films or super-hero comic books. Even the “downtime” scenes are designed to set up and drive the story on to the next exciting encounter.
Risking life and limb: But don’t get too comfortable! Although your characters will occasionally perform amazing feats and have unique special abilities, they are unquestionably mortal, suffering injuries and with clear limits to their power. Their mortal fragility may even become one of the challenges they must overcome to succeed in their quests.
Obstacles, challenges, and foes: Your characters will do more than just fight bad guys. They will need to solve puzzles, navigate mazes, and face a host of problems they must overcome to succeed in their goals.
To accomplish extraordinary goals: The primary goal of a Cool Name RPG adventure is almost always something extraordinary, such as locating a lost city, recovering a legendary artifact, or breaking someone out of a prison no one has ever escaped from. Individual encounters in pursuit of this goal might be down-to-earth, but the primary goal is nearly always extraordinary.
New to Roleplaying Games? #
If you are a new or novice gamer, we recommend you start by reading the Cool Name RPG Starter Book. A free digital download of the Starter Book will be available at www.coolnamerpg.com. <AVAILABLE LATE 2024>
The book you are reading today assumes you are already familiar with roleplaying games and how they work. We will not spend much time discussing things like “What is a d6?” or explaining what a gamemaster does.
Basic Game Concepts #
You will learn the Cool Name RPG rules in the following chapters, but first, it is helpful to familiarize yourself with some of the game’s core concepts.
Adventures #
Adventures are like the stories from your favorite fantasy books, movies, and shows. As you play the game, you and your friends tell your own story, and the characters you create are the heroes. Every decision your character makes is up to you, and the only limit to where the story takes you is your imagination.
Encounters #
Every adventure is made up of a series of interconnected Encounters. Encounters are like the scenes in a movie or the chapters in a book. Each Encounter is a discrete moment in the story with clear objectives, obstacles, and rewards. The outcome of the Encounters determines how your story unfolds.
A very short Adventure might only consist of a single Encounter while a long Adventure might include a dozen or more. It all depends on the nature of the Adventure and the length of the game the Gamemaster has planned for you. Most Adventures Cool Name RPG consist of 5-10 Encounters of varying types.
Challenges #
Each Encounter will present one or more Challenge your characters must overcome. The way your characters deal with these Challenges and the outcome of the characters’ Actions determines where the story goes next. Attempting to pick a lock, trying to fast talk the guards, or battling an ancient dragon are examples of Challenges you might face during an Encounter.
Challenge Points #
Every Challenge your characters face is assigned a number of Challenge Points. Challenge Points represent the magnitude of the Challenge. The bigger the Challenge, the more Challenge Points assigned to it. When you reduce the Challenge Points to zero, you have overcome the Challenge.
Rounds and Turns #
Cool Name RPG tracks time during Encounters using Rounds. In one Round, each character (a hero controlled by a player) and NPC (a person or creature controlled by the Gamemaster) gets one Turn to act. The characters and NPCs take their Turns in the order of their Initiative, with the highest Initiative going first, the next highest second, and so forth.
Length of a Round #
The length of a Round depends on the nature of the Encounter. A protracted search of the city for a fleeing criminal might use Rounds that last an hour each, while a quick and dirty fight with that same criminal in a dingy back alley might use Rounds that are just a few seconds long.
Scores #
The adventure worlds you explore in a Cool Name RPG adventure, and many of the things found in those worlds, are defined by Scores. A Score is a numeric value that defines the quality, power, or impact of a thing in the game. The higher the Score, the more it impacts your character—sometimes positively and sometimes negatively.
Points #
Points are like Scores, in that they are a numeric value that help define aspects of your characters, the world, and the things that inhabit that world. Unlike Scores, Points are reduced and restored over the course of the game. For instance, Vitality Points represent how much damage your character can withstand before they must stop to recover. When their Vitality Points reach zero, they are out of the fight until they restore at least one Vitality Point. Challenge Points, introduced earlier, are another example of Points. You overcome a Challenge when you reduce its Challenge Points to zero.
Actions #
On your character’s Turn, you decide what your character says and does. Whatever you describe is your character’s Action. Many Actions in a Cool Name RPG game are handled with simple storytelling: you describe what your character does and the Gamemaster describes the outcome of the Action.
Sometimes, however, it may not be clear if your character can achieve the outcome you desire. For instance, you might want your character to leap across the river of lava, but are they strong enough to make it to the other side? When a situation like this arises, you make an Action Check.
Action Checks #
An Action Check is a game mechanic used to check if your character succeeds at their Action. The most common way to resolve an Action Check is to roll a pre-determined number of dice, add the results together, and compare the total to a Difficulty Score. If the dice total matches or exceeds the Difficulty Score, your Action is a success! If the total is less than the Difficulty Score, the Action failed and it is up to the Gamemaster to describe the consequences.
Difficulty Score #
To determine an Action’s Difficulty Score, the Gamemaster adds up the Scores for everything working against your character. The complexity of the task, the Actions of your opponents, and the conditions under which your character is attempting the Action may all factor into the Difficulty Score. The total of these Scores is the Action’s Difficulty Score. The higher the Difficulty Score, the more difficult the Action.
Action Score #
Where the Difficulty Score is the total of everything working against your character, your character’s Action Score is the total of everything working in their favor. Your character’s natural abilities, their training, their equipment, and the Actions of their allies all have the potential to improve the character’s Action Score. The higher your character’s Action Score, the more dice you get to roll, and the better your odds of success.
Action Dice #
The dice you roll to see if your character succeeds at their Action are called the Action Dice. To find your Action Dice, locate your Action Score on the Action Chart and grab the dice indicated. Roll the dice, add the results together.
Open Ended Rolls #
Cool Name RPG uses open ended dice rolls. Sometimes this mechanic is referred to as exploding dice. When you roll the highest number on a die, add the result of the first roll to your total, then roll another die of the same type and add the result of the new roll to your total as well. If the new die rolls the highest number, repeat the process. This continues until you roll lower than the highest number on the die.
Open Ended Roll Example #
Wargar is attempting to leap across a crevasse. Jumping this crevasse is Difficulty Score 10, and Wargar has Action Score 7. Wargar’s player, Steve, checks the Action Chart and sees the Action Dice for Action Score 7 are d6 + d8. Steve rolls the dice and gets a 6 on the d6 and a 1 on the d8. This adds up to 7 (6 + 1). Not bad, but Steve needs Wargar to do better if he’s going to make it to the other side.
Fortunately, Steve rolled a 6 on the d6, the highest number possible on that die, so the roll open ends. He grabs another d6 and rolls it as well, getting a 3. Adding this to his total he gets a final result of 10 (6 + 1 + 3). Wargar lands safely on the far side of the crevasse. That was a close one!
Determine the Result #
Compare the total you rolled to the Difficulty Score. If the total rolled matches or exceeds the Difficulty Score, your Action succeeds. If the total rolled is less than the Difficulty Score, your Action fails. The Gamemaster will describe how your character’s success or failure to perform the Action impacts the story.
Effect #
Sometimes you only need to know whether you succeeded at your Action or not. Other times, it is important to know not only if you succeeded, but how great of a success you achieved. We call this measurement of success the Effect.
The Effect of an Action Check is the amount by which your roll exceeded the Difficulty Score. For example, if the Difficulty Score was 6 and you rolled 10, the Effect is 4. The Effect of a successful Action Check is never less than 1. If the Effect of a successful Action Check ever comes out to zero, treat it as Effect 1.
The most important reason to know your Action’s Effect is that when you are attempting to overcome a Challenge, you subtract the Effect from the Challenge’s Challenge Points. If you reduce the Challenge Points to zero, you have overcome the Challenge.
Let’s Review! #
A Cool Name RPG Adventure is made up of a series of Encounters. Each Encounter features one or more Challenges you must overcome. Each Challenge is assigned Challenge Points to represent the size of the Challenge. If you reduce the Challenge’s Challenge points to zero, you are victorious.
During an Encounter, you choose Actions for your character to overcome the Challenges. If it is uncertain whether your character will succeed at an Action, you make an Action Check. Find your character’s Action Score and roll the associated Action Dice. If the total of your roll is equal to or greater than your Action’s Difficulty Score, you succeed. The Effect of a successful Action is subtracted from the Challenge’s Challenge Points. Reduce all the Challenge Points for all the Challenges in an Encounter to zero, and you complete the Encounter! At that point you move on to the next exciting Encounter, continuing until you reach the epic conclusion of your heroic adventure!
The Rule of Common Sense #
The rules found in this book are written with the expectation that the Rule of Common Sense is in effect. This means that when you or the Gamemaster are interpreting the rules, if something isn’t explicitly spelled out in the rules or if the rules don’t fit with the situation you are facing, you will use common sense to decide how to proceed.
For instance, in the combat rules, we will not write, “You must be able to reach the target to hit it with a sword.” Common Sense dictates that of course you need to be able to reach someone to hit them with a sword. We trust you and the people you play with to make these calls on your own. In the case of an intractable disagreement, the Gamemaster makes the final call.