THE LAND OF FREEDOM
There’s not much in the way of law on The Frontier. Your choices won’t be hindered by such formalities. You will, however, be judged by the people you interact with, and how you treat them can drastically affect how they treat you. So if you decide to help someone down on their luck, you may be in for a reward. And if your wilin’ ass goes on a tear of destruction and carnage, expect the populace to regard you accordingly. There’s a complex and diverse cast of folks you’ll have to interact with to achieve your goals and save your souls, and often the quickest solution (violence) isn’t the best one. Use your wits to outsmart your enemies or charm to manipulate them, use your quickness to stalk around undetected or your toughness to intimidate your adversaries into submission, whatever tickles your fancy. And if you wanna survive, be smart about it. Take advantage of your attributes, utilize your skills, mind your surroundings, and work together.
DO WHATEVER IT TAKES
You can try to do anything that you think of, skill checks not specified in the handbook are up to the discretion of The Raconteur.
TURNS, ACTIONS, AND ROLLS
During certain sections of gameplay you will be operating in a turn based manner, most notably for combat encounters and emergencies. Each character gets 2 actions per turn, unless they get a bonus action from a skill. You can move 1 stride (6 feet) per action. You can hold 1 action per turn and use it to react to something later by interrupting another person’s turn (usually with dodge, block, counter) This resets every round. Generally any action a character decides to take will need to pass a roll for its corresponding attribute. You get to roll 1 die per attribute point. Some actions allow you to roll your die for the base attribute plus 1 die per bonus point in a secondary attribute. To reiterate, the bonus attribute points are the points over 1. Normal feats will require you to roll a 4 or above to succeed. 3 can be a half success, the details are left up to The Raconteur. Less than 3 is a failure. Difficult feats will require you to roll a 6 with at least one of your die to be successful.
Rolling a double 6 grants you a critical success, causing events to fall even more into your favor. Rolling a snake eyes is a critical failure, even if one of your other die landed on 6. If you get both a crit-success and a crit-failure, then the events will unfold both favorably AND unfavorably. Like, you nail a nosey sheriff right in the eye, but the round ricochets out of his skull and hits you in the knee. Hey, shit happens.
Rolling a triple 6 grants you a miracle, completely getting you out of whatever bind you’re in. MAYBE YOU WANT TO...
Haggle a price, or pry some info from tight lips? Persuasion check - CHARM.
Shoot a fellow human being? Aim check - DEXTERITY.
Stitch up a companion’s wound? Medical check - SMARTS + DEXTERITY bonus.
Discern if an npc is a no good liar? Perception check - SMARTS.
Craft a pulley to lift somethin’ heavy? Crafting check - DEXTERITY + SMARTS bonus.
Carry a hogtied goat over your shoulder? Strength check - TOUGHNESS.
And so on...
ENCOUNTERS AND ADVENTURES, TESTING THE HAND OF FATE
Your travels will send you all across the expanse of The Frontier. From big settlements like New Bethlehem to small farm towns like Lil’ Yonder. Your main mission, the recovery of the “holy pieces”, will play out in a series of adventures that challenge your ability to problem solve and survive complex situations. During your travels between adventures you’ll be testing the hand of fate to determine what you encounter along the way. The way the hand of fate works is each player gets a card from a playing card deck. When traveling through a settlement or city, or through the wilderness in between pockets of civilization, The Raconteur will ask players to put their individual cards together into a hand, and will draw a card from it randomly. Whatever card the raconteur draws from the bunch will determine what encounters The Posse come across. You have no control over the obstacles you’ll face, but the right skills and tools can ensure that you’re prepared.
SURVIVAL...
... is never promised, this we know. Staying alive in this world is an act of defiance, offensive to nature. And nature will treat you as such. If you go without food you will starve, without water you will dehydrate, and without rest your mind and body will falter. Certain conditions, like especially dirty places, sickhouses, and sustained exposure to cold and wet weather will leave you vulnerable to sickness.
| HUNGER | Each day you go without food you lose one TOUGHNESS point, until you cannot succeed in TOUGHNESS checks. After 3 days, you start to lose DEXTERITY points, until you can’t succeed in those checks either, plus you lose 1 HP per day. |
|---|---|
| THIRST | Each day you go without water, you lose 1 QUICKNESS and 1 HP, until you cannot succeed in QUICKNESS checks, and until you die. |
| EXHAUSTION | Every day you go without rest you lose 1 SMARTS, until you can no longer succeed in those checks. |
| SICKNESS | When exposed to hostile weather, sick bodies or corpses, or consuming risky food or dirty water, you roll LUCK to see if you get sick. You’ll need a 4+ to not get sick. Once you’re sick, you will lose 1 attribute point per day, which attribute being up to the raconteur’s discretion. You will also lose 1 HP per day, until you are dead. |
Good luck.
MAKING CAMP
If you get caught out in the dark it may be best to build a fire and bivouac for the night. Building your camp comes down to a crafting check (DEXTERITY + SMARTS bonus). If you fail the check your camp may befall some misfortune like a collapsing tent, snake in the bedroll, rolling firewood, loose horse, an ant infestation, a hungry wildecat...
I HOPE THIS MESSAGE FINDS YOU WELL, STATUS EFFECTS
Status effects are temporary conditions that alter your characters attributes for a limited time. They can be obtained by consuming substances, or receiving trauma, or some sort of mental obscurity, they typically last a half day to a day.
| Drunk | For every 2 beers, or 1 whiskey, you must roll a TOUGHNESS check to see if you get drunk. With a 3-6, you’ll enjoy an increase to your CHARM and TOUGHNESS, and a decrease to SMARTS for half a day, with a 2 or a 1, you’ll get ‘wasted’, and get a decrease to CHARM, SMARTS, and DEXTERITY. |
|---|---|
| Stoned | For every toke of hazeflower you’ll roll SMARTS check to see how high you get. With a 3-6, you’ll get stoned and receive an increase in SMARTS. If you get a 2 or a 1, you’ll get paranoid and receive a decrease in SMARTS, and DEXTERITY. |
| Wired | For every nug of coldrock you chew, you’ll do a LUCK check get wired. 3-6 grants an increase in DEXTERITY and TOUGHNESS. A 2 or 1 will leave you tweaked, you keep the TOUGHNESS but not DEXTERITY, and you also get a decrease in SMARTS. |
| Laid | When your character has sex they roll LUCK to see if the sex was good. A 3-6 gives an increase in TOUGHNESS and SMARTS, but a decrease in LUCK. A 1 or 2 just gives a decrease in all 3. This lasts for half a day. |
| Starvin’ | If you go a day without food you receive a decrease in SMARTS. If you go 2 days without food you also get a decrease to TOUGHNESS. If you go 3 days without food, you begin to lose 1HP every day upon waking. |
| Sickly | Coming in contact with certain unclean things, or certain weather conditions can leave you sickly. You get a LUCK check to see if you get sick. This gives you a decrease in TOUGHNESS, and you roll LUCK every day to see if it gets worse or better. With a 3-5 you’ll stay stable, with a 6 you’ll be cured, and with a 1-2 you lose 1HP. |
PLAINS, TRAINS, AND HORSES : TRANSPORTATION
Your journey will take you far. To travel quicker, and more safely, you’ll want horses, maybe a carriage, or a ‘horseless’ if you can find one. Sometimes you’ll be able to find caravans or carriage drivers that are willing to haul you from place to place, for a price. Traveling long distances will be measured in days. You’ll test the hand of fate once each day you're out on the road, or in the wilderness. If you have a ranger in your posse, they can use their binoculars after the hand is played, to try and spot whatever’s up ahead.
HORSES: Must be broken, or bought broke. You tame a horse with a CHARM check and TOUGHNESS bonus. Breaking a horse counts as a feat of agility for the catlike skill. A horse allows you to travel twice as fast (over good terrain), granted everyone’s on one. A horse has 9 HP.
HORSELESS CARRIAGES: Can travel half a day, but needs a half day to charge. Can be modified with polished bearings for increased speed, optimized battery for a whole days worth of travel on a single charge, and axels can be upgraded to allow it to function on rough terrain. Modifications can be found at machinists shops.
THE ORIGINAL GIG ECONOMY
If you find yourself in need of new gear, strapped for cash, broke, or starving to death, sometimes you’ll find work needs done. Maybe someone needs a crop harvested, a well fixed, or a wildcat hunted down. Doing these quick jobs in between big adventures should help you avoid destitution. Ask someone in town, like a bartender or a whore, if anyone's tryin’ to get a job done. In addition, you may run across The Carlton Agency, who will sometimes hire mercenaries for their dirty work. These gigs in particular can be quite lucrative. Of course, you can always make your dough the good ol’ way; armed robbery. When you run across a wealthy rancher makin’ his way west with a fancy pocketwatch hangin on his chain, who knows what misfortunes may befall him? Some folks may take up a game of poker to get themselves out of a fix, to those we say good luck.
GEAR, ITEMS and STUFF
Inventory
WEAPONS
You need a holster, sheath, or sling for each weapon you got, and some kind of pack to carry anything bigger than pocket- size.
PACKS
A ‘fist’ is a colloquial unit of measurement, meaning something about the size of your actual fist. Each pack you come across will be able to hold a limited number of fists. For example, a satchel can hold 3 fists, a backpack can hold 8.
*Whereas drawing a weapon doesn’t cost an entire action but rather just a quickness check, getting something from your bag takes an action. Replacing it does not.
NEVER FORGET YER CAN OPENER, AND OTHER USEFUL GADGETS
| Arc Lighter | They come in varying shapes and sizes, but generally an arc lighter is a handheld cylinder that directs static energy into a small, but very hot arc the can be used to light any decent kindlin’. |
|---|---|
| Mag-Lantern | Proving the oil lanterns of the past obsolete, a mag lantern captures visible electromagnetic radiation in a transparent vessel, providing brilliant light on any area. These come in multiple colors, from bluish white to reddish orange, and you do not want to be in the company of one when it breaks, releasing concentrated beta radiation unto its surroundings. |
| Laser Cutter | Pocketsized cylindrical static cyclers that direct heat energy into a beam of plasma that can cut through even the strongest materials, (cutting time may vary). Usually limited in range to about an inch. |
| Radio Reciever | Short range radio signals can be heard with a correctly tuned receiver. There’s only one frequency to tune to, and every town has a station used to play news, music and radio-plays. 2 way direct communication radio’s are also available, but most only have enough power to send a short, 3 second message, and must be recharged after each. |
| Field Disruptor | Unleashes an electromagnetic pulse that disrupts and destroys any functional electromagnetic fields or connections. Effectively, send whatever area you release this in back to the stone age. A field disrupter was used by the Jeb Jameson Gang to derail the Westbound train at Crimson Cut, killing dozens, and as such, new legislation about these kinds of devices has deemed them strictly illegal. As if the Union had any jurisdiction out here to enforce that law with... |
CLOTHES + ARMOR
Most clothes serve the base purpose of minimal protection and modesty. Some unique clothing can increase specific attributes, like an especially pretty dress can lif t your CHARM, and some can give attribute raises for specific actions, like a wreath of severed human ears giving a TOUGHNESS raise for intimidation checks.
Armor- Some clothing on the frontier is lined with lightiron. It creates an undetectable and unobtrusive electromagnetic field that slows fast moving protons, granting a certain amount of protection from gunshots. Usually 1 HP. These can be layered.
Vests: Protect the torso.
Ponchos: Protect torso and upper arms.
Jackets: Protect torso and arms.
Chaps: Protect legs.
Dusters: Protect the whole body.
Hats: Protect the head.
COMBAT
Violence explodes outwards like a wildfire, lashes out in all directions and scars all in its path. In this way, a fight on The Frontier spreads outwards, starting with the two combatants closest to each other. When a fight starts, the opposed combatants closest to one another will roll QUICKNESS to see who who shoots first. If the posse’s initiator wins out, every member of the posse gets a turn, using their comrades momentum to overtake the enemy, and then the enemy team gets a turn and so on. If the initiator loses, the enemy combatant gets a turn and the comrade gets a chance to react, then the next closest combatants roll for QUICKNESS and the process repeats.
When shit pops off and white-hot electromagnetic death spears are zooming through the air, its best to get somethin’ betwixt you and them. You can take cover during combat if you’re within 1 stride of something solid. You can dive to cover within 2 strides with a successful QUICKNESS check. Once someone is in cover, they can only be hit with a perfect 6 roll, and only take half damage, unless a crit is rolled. Once you’re in cover, you can perform a QUICKNESS check to hide. You may initiate combat without a QUICKNESS check if you get the drop on the enemy, and attack before they are aware of you. Beware, they can do this to you too.
You can escape a fight by hiding and running away, you can also end a fight with some well placed words. if the enemy is low on morale after taking a shot to the gut, they’re likely to agree to throw down their weapons. Sometimes the fear of what you may do to them is enough to convince. You can perform CHARM and TOUGHNESS checks during combat to persuade or intimidate your foes.
You get 2 actions per turn. You are not restricted as to what you can try to do during these moves, and most actions during combat will be checked with DEXTERITY, QUICKNESS, or TOUGHNESS.
GUNS
Guns on the frontier are charged with electromagnetic friction, and fire high energy protons at thousands of feet per second, no ammo needed, but each must be recharged after a certain number of shots. Some guns have aim penalties at suboptimal ranges, in the form of increased target numbers. For example, at long range with a pistol you need a 6 to hit instead of a 4+, and a crit instead of a 6 for a headshot. 1 stride is point blank, 3 strides is short range, 3-6 strides is mid range, 7 strides and up is long range. All headshots deal 6 damage.
Melee
Player rolls DEXTERITY to hit. A damage point is added for each of a player’s bonus TOUGHNESS points.
All melee weapons can be used to execute or knock out enemies from behind, if undetected, with a DEXTERITY + TOUGHNESS check. Attacking someone with your bare hands will work the same way as melee weapons, except you will only do the TOUGHNESS bonus point damage. Grappling is a TOUGHNESS check with a DEXTERITY check to get into a chokehold that does 2 HP damage per turn.
| short-range damage | mid-range-damage | long range damage | aim penalty | strikes per charge | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6-gun | 2 | 2 | 2 | Long | 6 |
| 2-banger | 2-4 | 2-4 | 2-4 | Long | 2 |
| Scattergun | 6 | 3 | 1 | Mid | 1 |
| Levergun | 3 | 3 | 3 | Long | 1 |
| Pumpgun | 4 | 4 | 3 | Long | 1 |
| Longshot | 6 | 6 | 6 | Short range and closer | 1 |
| Knives | 1+T | 1 thrown | - | Mid-1 | 1 no recharge |
| Sword/Axe | 2+T | 2 thrown | - | Mid-1 | 1 no recharge |
| Bludgeon | 2+T | 2 thrown | - | Mid-1 | 1 no recharge |
| Lightbow | T | T | T | Long | 1 no recharge |
| Firelance | T-T+3 | 3-6 | 3-6 | Mid | 1 |
| Warclub | T-T+3 | 2 | 0-2 | Mid | 1 no recharge |
IDLE HANDS... WEAPON MODIFICATION
Weaponry is an unfortunately necessary commodity on The Frontier. Folks who find their lifestyle relies on maximally effective combat gear provide a customer base for the niche but lucrative business of weapon modification. Modifications can be bought from any gunsmith on The Frontier, and, as they drastically effect the behavior and usefulness of the weapons they modify, they ain’t cheap.
| 6 GUN + Cannon cylinder | Increases damage to 4 per shot, but reduces shots before recharge to 3. |
|---|---|
| 2 BANGER + 4 banger kit | Stack 2 extra barrels on top that can, of course, all be fired at once for 8 damage. |
| SCATTERGUN + Extra barrel | Adds extra barrel to the top, giving the user 2 shot per charge, that be be fired at once for double damage. |
| LEVERGUN + Scope | Negates range penalty at long range. |
| PUMPGUN + Choke | Increases damage to 6 by concentrating the scattered light spears into one singular powerful shot, doing 8 damage, but given the weapons design you need a perfect 6 to hit. (Negated by Sharpshooter) |
| LONGSHOT + Bayonet | Gives you an option for point blank combat when holding the weapon, does 2 damage plus TOUGHNESS points damage. |
UNIVERSAL MODS
Any weapon (including melee) can be enhanced by adding advanced circuitry.
| Goldcopper wiring | Increases electrical charge in shots, electrocuting the target to death on a critical hit. |
|---|---|
| Superheated wiring | Increases the heat in every shot, igniting the target (to death) on critical hit. |
| Electromagnetic field generator | Applies a hard electromagnetic force field to every shot, knocking the target to the ground on critical hit, depriving them of an action on their next turn, if they survive. |
WOUNDS, BLEEDING, CRIPPLING, AND HEALING
THE AFOREMENTIONED BLEEDING
Bleeding out is a more immediate issue. And once you’re afflicted by a bleeding wound, it requires immediate attention. You can’t perform any action that requires you to take your hands from your wound, without losing 1 HP every time, and you can only move half as far. Dressing the wound should fix the issue, you’ll need some bandages.
CRIPPLING
Your limbs have their own HP, separate from your body. They each have 3 HP. If a wound receives 3 damage, it’s crippled until healed, and useless. If a wound receives 6 damage points or more, it is severed. The wound must be dressed within moments to avoid bleeding out, and you’ll want to grab a prosthetic when you next get to town. Don’t be embarrassed, happens all the time. Prosthetic arms lower DEXTERITY to 1. Prosthetic legs may reduce your QUICKNESS by 1.
Medicine, clinics, and doctors on The Frontier ain’t exactly easy to come by, but the tenacious spirit of The Frontier’s natives and settlers has led to some innovations.
SNAKE OIL
An unregulated substance made from the fat of the whipsnake infused
with human plasma is called ‘snake oil’, and takes advantage of the
whipsnake’s natural immunity to its own venom. Since its venom basically
dissolves flesh on a cellular level, nature’s countermeasure is a
special cell that’s function is to restore that dissolved flesh, like
extremely fast stem cells. The cell can bind itself to human cellular
data if mixed and heated to a specific temperature for a prolonged time.
Snake oil is very expensive, but can be crafted if you can get your
hands on the materials, a fire, and someone with the smarts enough to do
it right. Replenishes all HP to the body or injured limb.
HOME REMEDIES
Nourishment in the form of well prepared meals has been known to speed up the healing process. Some folks also know of an ol’ native concoction of some kinda leaf and some kinda root that, together with water (and, more often, spit), speeds up the healing process, both granting 1 HP a day to the recipient.