Introduction

Welcome to my home table ttrpg rules called Radiants. This game is a traditional tabletop role-playing game, played with paper, pencils and dice.

What is this game?

Radiants is a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG). In a TTRPG, Players generally assume the role of heroic Characters that fight for their ideals. They go on expeditions to accomplish quests, fight monsters, explore ruins, and gather power. During interludes between those journeys, they build, heal, and learn. Eventually they may end up changing or saving the world.

Heroic in this context doesn’t necessarily mean ‘altruistically motivated’ but ‘fated’, or ‘larger than life'. These rules are written for a ‘mythic fantasy’ or ‘high fantasy’ type of game, where the heroes can perform feats of incredible strength, speed, or magic, and the beliefs and ideals of the heroes are central.

This is guided by a set of rules and a game master (GM) who narrates the story and oversees gameplay. Unlike a book or visual media, the power of a TTRPG is that we get to tell a story together that changes naturally in response to your decisions.

How does it work?

Players describe their characters' actions, and the outcomes are often determined by rolling dice.

The imaginary world that the Players will explore is populated by a cast of Creatures:

• Characters - Humanoid Creatures controlled by the Players.
• Party - The group of Characters.
• Non-Player Characters (NPCs) and Monsters that are created and controlled by the GM.

The roles of the Players in the game are straightforward but not necessarily easy! They will be presented with a scene in which they describe what their Characters do, rolling dice to determine the outcome of their Actions.

The core mechanic

Any Action a Character might possibly attempt that could result in failure is resolved by testing Attributes. In order to successfully test an Attribute, a Player must roll above or equal to a Difficulty Rating (DR) on a d20. The Attribute score is added to this roll.

Rolling below the DR indicates things went poorly or that the Action did not go as planned. The GM will then narrate the outcome of the failed Action describing how the Characters are affected.

The following pages outline some more specifics on how this is done in practice, but these are the main mechanics to remember.