Excerpts From the D12 System Core
These are just a few small sections taken from the D12 System Core
Excerpts From the D12 System Core belongs to the following groups:
All About the RPGThe following entries are unformatted exceprts from the D12 System Core book I recently released.
You can alternatively download a free preview here
D12 Lense
Pre-Emptive book description
Welcome to D12 Gaming. This book will give you all of the necessary tools and suggestions for playing a game that uses the D12 system. This book has been put together as a primer for the game worlds Penniless Canadian Stereotypes is releasing; but the book itself has been developed in a very general manner. This will allow you to use the D12 system for any game you play. If you enjoy the work of other fine companies but run into trouble when it comes to system, this book has suggestions and rules for creating your own material, adapting game worlds to use the D12 system and to completely personalize your playing experience.
We have added a submission form for those of you who develop fan material and would like to see your D12 creations put in print when we create specialty expansion books for the system. That’s right, we may develop the game, but you, the readers are the people that play it and what you have to say makes the difference.
We have many expansion books planned, none of which will be mandatory and can be used as optional specialty books; but the order in which they are released is all up to our players and what they want to see first.
This book is the focal point for all our games and will be a required element for playing any game setting we have developed. All of our games will have their own quirks and unique elements, but they will all use the same system, D12.
We hope you enjoy the D12 system and always remember, games are meant to be played.
description continued…
So playing a new system, there is always a question of what materials or supplies you are going to need. Obviously, since this is a table top RPG, you’re going to need pencils and erasers; we suggest mechanical pencils, they allow you to write smaller and we all know that no matter how well intentioned a person might be, there is NEVER enough room on a character sheet for at least one thing you want to describe.
You’re going to need character sheets. There is an example character sheet in the back of this book, but since the system core rulebook was intended as a primer for the games PCS will be releasing, this sheet is very general and really only applies for someone using the D12 system for their own creation or to be used as a reference guide for making your own character sheets.
Beyond those basic materials you will need up to fifteen 12-sided dice. Eight should be sufficient, but an experienced character could manage to gain as many as fifteen dice to make a single roll with.
If you don’t have that many D12s, we suggest looking for paper cut-outs on the internet. Kevin Cook is a good suggestion and most likely your one stop shop for free cut-out dice.
That’s it. That’s all you actually need.
From here, all you’ll need to pick up are our game setting books which are a detailed account of every detail you’ll need to play that game with references to this core system book when necessary.
What if I’m using my own game setting?
Easy, this book will give you all the system material you’ll need to work it into your own game world, there are even areas built with suggestions on how to adapt the D12 System to your specific needs.
I guess the only thing you’ll need beyond this is players and somewhere to game.
Terms of Play
Like any good role playing game system, there are going to be some terms and names that you may or may not understand or be familiar with. As gamers we all make assumptions about standard gaming terms, but not all of us are actually aware of them.
The following is a list of terms, call it the D12 vernacular, which will help you settle into this book and other D12 books that use the same terminology.
Achievement: The target achievement of a roll is the number on a D12 a character needs to get when making a roll to gain a success.
Body Points: A character’s body points are a measured method of determining a person’s pain tolerance and general physical well-being. These points are tied in with injury levels which are explained below.
Bonus: A bonus to a given roll either adds bonus dice to the dice pool a person is rolling or will add automatic successes.
Bunk: Bunking a roll means that not only have you failed the roll you’ve tried, but you’ve really screwed up and there are going to be harsh consequences.
Character: A character is an imaginary person that a player or GM portrays in a game environment. This is an important piece of terminology you’ll need to know because a character is referred to frequently.
Combat Event: A combat event is a situation where a fight or conflict has begun and the on-going threat of combat continues.
Combat Sequence: A combat sequence is a portion of a combat event wherein all the players and NPCs that the GM is controlling are given the chance to take action.
D12: A D12 is a twelve sided die that can be purchased from most hobby shops and RPG supply stores as well as online distributors.
Damage: Damage is an important part of combat because it is the measure of how much a weapon, occurrence or substance will harm a person.
Dice Pool: A dice pool is the number of dice that a character can use for a single roll; this dice pool is created by adding certain aspects of your character to achieve a desired end.
Downtime: Downtime is time that passes in a game that is glazed over and is unimportant to the plot at hand.
Game: A game, in this context, is a fictional set of events that take place in a fictional world or a depiction of the real world in a fictional manner for the purpose of playing the part of a fictional character for amusement and enjoyment.
Game Session: A game session is a day or time that the GM and players gather in one place to play the role playing game.
GM: The GM is the games master, the games master is the person who runs the game and controls all of the world-wide elements of the game, as well as the plot.
Injury: Injury levels represent when a person has been harmed and the effects may or may not be lasting and debilitating.
Melee: Melee combat is hand to hand or armed combat and is used as a descriptor for anything built or made for close range use.
NPC: A non-player character is just like a player character in many respects except that the GM is in control of him or her.
Party: A party is group of players working towards a common goal or banding together due to circumstance or friendship.
PC: A player character is a fictional person, the player’s alter ego during a role playing game.
Player: The players are people who are playing the game and are not hosting or “running” it.
Penalty: A penalty is a loss of dice that a character will be able to use in their dice pools or a specific dice pool.
Ranged: A ranged weapon or attack is one that is designed or by matter of circumstance, something at a range or distance from the character. This is typically no less than outside of arm’s reach or within a few steps.
Roll: A roll is when you need to roll your dice or die to accomplish actions through a random method. Some people may not think of dice with such a small range of numbers to be random, but there too high a degree of chance can make players feel uneasy.
Success: A success is when a die you have rolled matches or exceeds the achievement set out for the action you are attempting.
Threshold: The threshold of a roll is a certain number of successes that a person will require to succeed at a given task when rolling.
Rolling
While it might seem like getting the best roll is the be-all to end-all, its not. An RPG is a role playing game…a game based upon ROLE PLAYING, not to be confused with ROLL playing. The only reason that an RPG uses dice, no wait that’s not right; the only reason an RPG should use dice (that’s better) is to enforce some element of chance and preference; chance being the random element that a rolled die presents and preference allows those characters who are more experienced or better trained to have a larger dice pool.
Arguing and adjudicating your way through a dice-less RPG can be a major hassle and something that the average gamer is not prepared for. Using dice helps to make sure that the GM remains in his or her position of power, the story writer, and the players remain in their position, the characters in that story – only able to enforce their creativity and will over their characters, not the world at large. Don’t get me wrong, involving a player in the world around her is a great way to enrich the gaming experience; it’s just not something you should do very often because then the players begin to feel that the challenge of role play becomes solution based and it stops revolving around emotional depth and drama.
To this end, the following section will walk you through all the primary and secondary rolls involved in using the D12 system.
Requisites
The requisites of your character are his or her attributes, their physical and mental aspects. There’s no real way to quantify a human being in five tidy little numbers, but the parts that matter for dice rolling work into these groupings quite well.
One thing you might find is a bit of a contradiction with all of our ranting about emotion and role play and drama is that there’s no emotional requisite on this list! Oh my God! How do I figure out how much emotional affect my character has? Don’t worry, it’s going to be alright, just sit down and calm your breathing, now pull your head out of your ass and pay better attention. Feelings and emotional strengths are not things that can be counted or weighed, people adapt and change as they experience life and no one takes away from those experiences with the same lessons learned; if any at all. And for those of you that don’t know what emotional affect is…please for the love of the human race look it up.
The average adult human has a requisite dice pool of 0; this is of course if you believe in stereotyping and the simplicity of numbers. The truth is that there is no such thing as a general average for humanity. We are far too diverse and adaptive to think that a 20 year old male or female would be the same and have the same strengths and weaknesses if we compared one from every country or race on the planet. The reason that an RPG will conveniently create an average score for any aspect of a person’s character is that if we gave you different stats for different races, you’d cry racism and believe that someone was favored…from a country, same deal, just favoritism instead of racism. For there to be some kind of perspective for players to compare their characters to, their must be some kind of status quo so that you know how to imagine and develop your character.
We could say that everyone in a generic logging town has an average physical requisite of 2 and while it may seem to lend itself to stereotypes, it’s a simple way to give a player a means by which to compare the makeup of his character.
Racial Diversity
Something that most RPGs lack is a racial sub-set diversity in humans. This is of course to avoid being deemed racist, but it does leave a realistic void in games that strive to ride the edge of realism and fantasy.
No two humans are precisely or exactly the same, we are a diverse and colorful species and as a result we are different from one person to the next. This of course isn’t to say that one skin color makes you the same as someone of a different skin color, but there are some things about races you should know in humans.
Human races developed largely due to environmental conditions. We adapt quite well as a species and our racial diversity is living proof of it.
For instance, African people developed dark skin in their original localized environment because they lived in a very warm climate with lots of sun. This helped to ensure their skin wouldn’t become damaged as easily as pale skinned humans while living under it and their hair developed to keep from getting snagged on the wilderness around them. An evolutionary marvel when you compare the dark and naturally moist and healthy skin and hair of an African person to the clammy and pale, stringy haired physique of the average European.
Another great example of evolutionary adaptation is the Inuit people. They live in cold and unrelenting environments and as a result have naturally developed a thin layer of blubber in their bodies to keep them insulated from the cold as well as compounded muscle and fatty tissue around their eyes to keep them nearly shut. This helps to combat snow blindness, something I’m sure any Anglo-Saxon who’s spent time in winter climates would love to have.
What we’re trying to say is that racial diversity is a necessity and a reality of life. You don’t have to be racist or prejudiced, just honest. Some peoples are more adapted to certain conditions than others.
Something you won’t see here is that represented because once again, this book shows system and not setting. We urge GMs using the D12 system to create racial diversity in their gaming environments and show proper respect to the human race as a whole and as individual races.
This being said, one form of diversity that is represented in this book is regional adaptation; something that could quite easily replace the need for racial elements should a GM be so inclined. Regional traits are traits that a character would choose during their character creation to show some form of adaptation and capability from the environment they grew up in. These traits are not limited to the natural environment and include all manner of social situations as well as natural conditions.
These traits help to serve as a kind of marker for the origins of your character to better help you adapt to your character and the style of play associated with whatever type of person you create.
Traits
Traits are by definition, a distinguishing characteristic or quality. These individual aspects of your character make you unique not only in their implication, but in their combination. While two people have the same traits, they will not likely have it for the same reasons. Why you ask can more than 1 person have the same trait? In an RPG there are only so many effects that you can put to numbers and scores, inevitably, you’re going to end up with multiple people who have the same traits.
A lack-luster conclusion that you simply can’t escape.
Provided as follows is a list of example traits made for anyone’s use as well as the specific use of certain species.
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