Altered Dragon is a (relatively) rules light fantasy adventure game based upon the mechanics of dice pool games and the stories/ settings/ themes of classical fantasy adventure games.
The core mechanic of Altered Dragon is a "dice pool" roll. When a player wants to do something the GM will tell them what Attribute and Skill are involved. Then you roll a number of d6s equal to the Attribute + Skill, plus or minus any modifiers (such as a bonus for teamwork, or penalty for bad conditions, or whatever). The number of dice is your Dice Pool for that roll. You roll the dice and count the number of dice that show a 5 or a 6, each of these dice are called a Hit. The number of hits basically determines the awesomeness of your attempt, as follows:
| Hits | Awesomeness |
|---|---|
| 0 | Not Awesome: walking up stairs. |
| 1 | Completely Pedestrian: chopping firewood. |
| 2 | Professional: don't try this at home. |
| 3 | Hard: don't try this at all. |
| 4 | Extreme. |
| 5 | Crazy Extreme. |
| 6 | Super Human: clearly "impossible". |
Not every situation is the same, so hits alone don't tell the whole story:
- If you're acting against something fairly static (like climbing a tree) you'll need a flat number of hits to succeed, this is called the Threshold. If you equal or exceed the threshold then you succeed on your action.
- If you're acting against some sort of dynamic opposition (like sneaking past a guard) then first you roll and then they make their own roll. Their hits subtract from your hits, and if you have any hits left over then you succeed.
If your roll is a success, you'll have 0 or more Net Hits, which is however many hits you had over your Threshold, or however many you had left over after the defender rolled. More net hits is better, but the details depend on what you're trying to do. Sometimes your net hits don't actually matter, if it worked it just worked.
Instead of rolling the dice, you can skip the actual roll and just proceed as if you'd rolled 1 hit per 4 full dice you would have rolled. This is called Buying Hits. The result is slightly lower than your average result, but you don't have to roll (which takes time) and you're sure to get at least some number of hits (which is sometimes all you need).
If more than one person is working together, one person becomes the leader for the action, and everyone else is an assistant. Each assistant makes their own test, and their number of hits becomes a dice bonus for the leader. Then the leader makes a roll to determine the final effect.
Blackstar needs to climb into a tree to get a better view of where any nearby
bandit caves might be. This is a Strength + Athletics check, so they add up
their Strength of 4 and Athletics of 3 for a total of 7. The dice show
2,2,5,4,2,5,2, so that's 2 hits.
Later, Blackstar is sneaking into the cave to get the treasure inside. For this
they roll their Agility + Stealth and the guard inside rolls Intuition +
Perception. Blackstar has 8 dice on this test, and the roll is
3,6,6,4,6,2,5,4, which is 4 hits. The guard rolls 6 dice and gets just 1 hit,
so they don't notice Blackstar getting to the treasure.
Attributes are broad categories of competency that a character might have. Skills (next section) are more specific things your character might be good at. Someone who is a "jack of all trades, master of none" has high stats and low skills. Someone who is a specialist in just one particular field is someone with low stats and a high skill in that field.
- Strength: Lets you be mighty like Worf.
- Agility: Lets you be agile like a Skywalker.
- Intuition: Lets you sense like Yoda.
- Logic: Lets you be smart like Spock.
- Willpower: Lets you be stubborn like Kirk.
- Charisma: Lets you be charming like Riker.
- Edge: Is like your "luck" or "plot armor" stat. Edge helps protect you from most dangers, and you can use edge to swing fate in your favor.
In addition to being used like a normal stat in some situations, you also get a number of "edge points" at the start of an adventure. They can be used as follows:
- Before you roll you can spend one to get +6 dice on the roll.
- After you roll you can spend one to re-roll all of the dice that didn't get a hit.
In either case, once you've spent a point of edge any any dice rolled for that
action that show a 6 let you roll another die and add it into the total. So if
you spend an edge to re-roll your misses and get 4,5,6,2 as the re-rolls,
that's more 2 hits and you also get to roll 1 more die because of the 6. The
bonus dice can themselves keep giving you more bonus dice, as long as you keep
rolling 6s.
You get a fresh set of edge at the start of an adventure, and then you can alo get back an edge point back during an adventure for doing amazing things, having a clever plan, or otherwise being a cool bean. Your character also has a Driving Passion, and you get a use of edge back every time you accomplish something that puts you closer to achieving your Driving Passion.
Remember that even if you use some or all of your Edge points during an adventure, any rolls that use Edge as part of the dice pool always still use your full Edge score.
Skills represent a field of ability that's oriented around letting you do something or other. That said, skills are still fairly broad in their application, so we're splitting all the major things you're likely to care to do into 21 skills, organized by approximate theme into 3 groups of 7 each.
- Athletics: Is running, jumping, climbing trees, balancing on the branches, all that Crouching Tiger sort of stuff.
- Combat: The skill for making rapid life or death decisions. It lets you avoid threats and kill them back while you're at it.
- Larceny: This broad skill lets you do "illegal" stuff that isn't covered elsewhere, like forgery, lockpicking, picking pockets, and all that stuff.
- Perception: Lets you notice details about the physical world around you.
- Ride: This skill lets you ride on some creature that probably has a mind of its own. Horse, wolf, giant eagle, whatever.
- Stealth: Lets you hide in shadows, move silently, and generally be sneaky.
- Survival: This skill lets you persist in the face of adversity.
- Animal Ken: This lets you influence creatures that aren't sapient.
- Bureaucracy: Lets you interact with systems of people, laws, hierarchy, and that sort of stuff.
- Empathy: Lets you read body language and emotions to understand people.
- Expression: Lets you entertain and influence through art. It could be music, or speech, or writing, or anything like that.
- Intimidation: Is the art of using fear to get the response that you want from someone. It's about knowing how to deliver a threat just right.
- Leadership: Lets you guide groups of people both in and out of battle.
- Persuasion: The art of manipulating people into getting what you want without them immediately realizing it.
- Alchemy: Lets you work with potions, poisons, and other chemicals and things like that.
- Artisan: Is the skill for building and crafting raw materials into useful objects and constructions.
- Magitech: Lets you identify, use, build, and repair magical objects.
- Medicine: Is the skill for health management. You can do first aid, long term care, disease management, that sort of stuff.
- Research: Is the art of taking a lot of disorganized information and turning it into something useful.
- Sailing: Is the art of directing vehicles to do their thing. It's for naval vessels, star vessels, magitech walkers, and anything else like that.
- Spellcasting: Lets you cast spells and effects as well as identifying spells and their effects.
To keep things simple there's just five races and five archetypes. Your race gives you some bonuses to stats and your archetype gives you some bonuses to skills.
- Akuma: Fire demons. Their hair flickers and flows like fire, though it
only burns when they're angry.
- Intuition +1, Charisma +1.
- Human: Just like from Earth.
- Edge +1.
- Kitsune: Fox-eared folks with big bushy tails. Their fur and hair is
usually reddish orange or white.
- Intuition +1, Willpower +1.
- Oni: Up to 3 meters tall, skin in all colors of the rainbow (usually red
or blue), horns (usually two).
- Strength +2.
- Tengu: Raven-headed people, usually with black or blue feathers.
- Agility +1, Logic +1.
- Beguiler: A tricky and sneaky illusionist rogue.
- +2 Stealth and Persuasion, +1 Research.
- Cleric: Devotees of some cause, patron, or pantheon. They are armored by
faith alone.
- +2 Survival and Expression, +1 Alchemy.
- Soulborn: Warriors with a soul of blue fire, and a sword made from their
soul.
- +2 Combat and Leadership, +1 Magitech.
- Totemist: Wanderers who draw in the energy of beast souls to gain their
power.
- +2 Athletics and Animal Ken, +1 Medicine.
- Warlock: Magicians who harness the harsh powers of uncreation.
- +2 Spellcasting and Intimidation, +1 Perception.
Now let's talk about how to actually make a character.
- First you pick your Basic Attributes. You get 19 points to assign. Each attribute has to be at least 1, and they can go as high as 6.
- Your Edge always starts at 3. There's nothing to pick here, you just write it down next to the rest of your stats.
- For skills, you decide if you want to focus on Physical, Social, or Technical skills. One group gets 13 skill points, one gets 18 skill points, and one gets 23 skill points. Skills can go from 0 up to 6.
- Pick a Race and Archetype, and then write that down and write down the bonuses to your attributes and skills.
- Select a Driving Passion. This can be any sort of medium-term or long-term goal that your character is working towards. When you accomplish something towards your Driving Passion it refills a spent point of edge. If you ever completely fulfill your Driving Passion then you'll select a new one.
- Write down three categories of extra knowledge that your character has. These should be things that aren't already covered by one of the skills. Examples include History, Nobility, Mining, Monster Lore, anything like that.
- Write down three spells that your character knows. There's no specific spell list for this game, so just write some spell names and it'll work out.