Sample file - watermark.rpgnow.com · My Fan tasy Designed by: Giovanni Micolucci Text draft: Luca Maiorani Proofread: Natascia Cortesi (Italian edition), Tobie Abad, Josh T. Jordan

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My Fantasy

Designed by: Giovanni Micolucci

Text draft: Luca Maiorani

Proofread: Natascia Cortesi (Italian edition), Tobie Abad, Josh T. Jordan and Wilhem Person (English edition).

Translation: Francesco Zani

Cover and graphics: Valentina Pastore

Layout: Daniele Di Rubbo

Special thanks to: Claudio Casini, Emanuele Serafini, Luca Cecchinelli, Marco Lombardi and Raffaele Manzo.

Playtesters: Alessandro Nuzzi, Alessandro Serafini, Alber-to Tronchi, Claudio Casini, Daniele Di Rubbo, Emanuele Serafini, Francesco Orsatti, Luca Maiorani, Marco Driutti, Marco Lombardi, Mario Battistoni, Mattia Grazioli, Nicola Urbinati, Pietro Lanza, Simone Bonavita, Stefano Burchi, Stefano Robert Rebessi and Tommaso Seremia.

Vas Quas Editrice

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© 2014 Vas Quas Editriceisbn 978-1-326-08083-91st English edition updated to December 11th, 2014Layed out with Adobe® InDesign® CS6.Interior art: Fotokostic (iStockphoto)Fontset: UnZialish (logo), Morris Roman (headers), Fontin Sans (text).

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Indice1. Introduction ............................................................... 5

1.1 The dice .................................................................52. Roles in the game ....................................................... 9

2.1 The Game Master ..................................................9A different role �������������������������������������������������������� 10

2.2 The players ...........................................................11Act in freedom, fight without mercy ������������������� 12

3. Prepare the game ...................................................... 153.1 Sketching the world ............................................ 153.2 Character creation .............................................. 16

Warrior ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 16Magician ������������������������������������������������������������������ 16Explorer �������������������������������������������������������������������� 17

3.3 Knacks ................................................................. 173.4 Define your character ......................................... 183.5 Create the Menace .............................................. 193.6 Bonds ................................................................... 223.7 Equipment ........................................................... 233.8 Setting Stress ...................................................... 253.9 Create the Pools .................................................. 253.10 The first Mission ................................................. 25

4. The Conflict ...............................................................274.1 The Conflict as a player ...................................... 274.2 The conflict as the GM ........................................ 28

Create a Condition �������������������������������������������������28To recap the conflict rules �������������������������������������29

4.3 Use the Destiny Pool ........................................... 29Rolling more dice ����������������������������������������������������29Increase your chances of Success �������������������������30Get one automatic success ������������������������������������ 31

4.4 Victory and Defeat .............................................. 31If the player wins the Conflict ������������������������������ 31

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If the player loses the conflict ������������������������������� 314.5 An example of Conflict........................................ 324.6 Suffering Stress ................................................... 334.7 The Heroic Act .................................................... 364.8 Conflicts between PCs ........................................ 374.9 Collaboration between players ........................... 37

Hero points ��������������������������������������������������������������385. Scenes ........................................................................ 41

5.1 Mission Scenes .................................................... 41Framing the first scene of the first mission �������� 41Kick off the first mission ����������������������������������������42Additional Mission Scenes �������������������������������������43

5.2 The End of the Mission ....................................... 445.3 Past and Present ................................................. 45

If the Past bar is full (at least seven marked slots) ����������������������������48

If the Present bar is full (at least seven marks) ���������������������������������������49

If no one filled the Present bar ������������������������������495.4 Advancement scene ............................................ 495.5 Bond Scene .......................................................... 51

Healing Stress ����������������������������������������������������������54Recharge the used Bonds ���������������������������������������54Enrich the equipment���������������������������������������������54

5.6 Bond scenes after Conflicts ................................ 555.7 The Last Mission ................................................. 56

The Mission was a success �������������������������������������57The Mission is a failure ������������������������������������������59

5.8 A new adventure ................................................. 59

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1. IntroductionA hidden menace awakens!

You recognized the signs� A glacial grip around your heart� An echo of cries so dreadful they make the mountains shiver! You glimpsed its gruesome figure in the darkness, where even light gives way to ice and obscurity� Suddenly, everything is clear to you: No one is safe anymore, and no one believes you�

But as you began to doubt yourself, you felt a call in your heart� You are heroes, the only hope for a world about to face its greatest foe� When the last hour comes, you know you can-not stand by and watch�

Draw your swords and lace your boots, Heroes� Your jour-ney begins now� Before you, the opponent� Behind you, your loved ones, your land, and your home� Will you have the cour-age to reach the end without turning back?

My Fantasy is a role-playing game of tough choices, hero-ism, exploration and grand battles. An epic adventure for three to five players. One player will have the special role of Game Master (GM).

1.1 The diceTo play My Fantasy you need at least twenty six-sided dice of one color and at least three of another color or different size.

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2. Roles in the gameWelcome players. Your journey is about to begin. Before unsheathing your imaginary swords and invoking the power of magic, it’s important that you read this book. Among these pages is enclosed immense power, all the rules needed to play My Fantasy, the only way to defeat the menace hanging over us.

The first thing you need to know is your role in the game. When you and your friends sit around the table as ready as knights can be for battle, one of you will play as the GM, all the others will be player characters.

2.1 The Game MasterWhen you are the GM, you hold an immense power over the story, so you must treat the player characters like pro-tagonists in a heroic movie. You can use all your resources to give them a life full of adventure. You should rejoice in their successes and mourn their failures.

It’s your duty to listen to the players’ input. They will of-ten suggest elements on their own while asking you what their characters can see and hear from the world around them. Your job is to say yes, taking advantage of what they introduce as a basis for setting interesting obstacles and threats.

Playing My Fantasy is almost like having a conversation. Every time you say something and introduce any element, ask them “what do you do?” in order to pass the ball in their hands and build a lively conversation. Also ask them “why are you doing this?”, It’s important to know the rea-son for their actions. You are their fan, and it’s up to you to be sure that the characters have something to sink their teeth into.

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If you think they are in trouble, use all you can from their character sheet to help. Pester their bonds, offer op-portunities to use their skills and make sure they have a chance to shine. Use each of their contributions to help them move their characters around the world but also to advance the menace at the same time. Closer. Always clos-er.

One of your tasks is also to portray all the non-player characters (NPCs). Create them with deep, complex lives, but always at all times that they are nothing more than extras. They real protagonists are the player characters (PCs).

A different roleYou’ll notice that My Fantasy works in a peculiar way for the GM. It’s not up to you to direct players to a definite decision nor tell them everything they see and hear in the world. The players have the freedom to steer the story through their actions and choices and the power to add elements to the game world without having to ask.

Using a metaphor from the musical world: As GM you’re not a conductor or a composer. It’s not your role to decide the beginning of action and its ending. Think of yourself as a bass player. You are there to perform the background track so the other players can play their melodies and ex-press themselves freely.

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2.2 The playersYou are the heroes. You have the daunting task of defeat-ing the menace to protect everything you love and believe in. Each of you will create and roleplay one of these he-roes, outlining their past and guiding them into battle, ex-ploration and mystery solving.

As players you have authority over your character: what they do, think and want. The GM will ask “why are you doing this?” (e.g. if you say that you look out the window, the GM will ask: “why are you doing this?”, you might an-swer that you want to check the house of the governor to keep an eye on who enters and exits). As players you have authority on the past story of your hero, the GM can not intrude in it.

Unlike other games My Fantasy allows you to introduce environmental elements and NPCs, but you’ll always need to ask the GM (e.g. you can decide that you want a knight to appear before you. The GM will usually tell “yes, and...” and will probably ask you who he is and how you know him as well as adding more details. The GM’s task is to use the elements you introduce as a basis for setting new challenges and obstacles.

Your main resource, as players, are the “Hero points”. Using one Hero point you can force the GM to accept an element you described. But remember that you’re not playing against the GM. Your task is to play to explore the limits of your character, in order to see him suffer and rejoice, fight, win and fall; to see him defeat the nearing enemy, or perhaps, to see him run home with the defeat in its heart.

My Fantasy is not a tactical game. Play for the aesthetic of the story and you’ll be playing well.

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Act in freedom, fight without mercyJust like with the GM, your role differs when compared to other RPGs. You are not here to follow the story created by the GM but you have the freedom to set the scenes and to influence the scenarios with your ideas and your choices.

All this power must not be wasted: the best way in which you can do it is play in a heartfelt way. Don’t wait for the GM to give you a mission to accomplish, set it your-self. Create items that you care about and like, bring the story where you want it to go and don’t be afraid of let-ting your hero act in the most passionate way. My Fantasy features active, brave heroes,. It works thanks to proactive and creative players.

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3. Prepare the gameA game of My Fantasy doesn’t start filling out the characters sheets. Before doing that, all of you will decide togeth-er the main elements of the world where you are going to play and you will begin to lay the groundwork for the creation of the Menace. Once you have a fantastic world ready to be filled of adventures, you will create the charac-ters and will better define the impending danger.

Use the following guidelines and you will have no prob-lems.

3.1 Sketching the worldGather paper and pencil and start making notes about what you want in your game world. You don’t need to cre-ate a complex full-fledged world with loads of details. That would be excessive and probably damaging to your game. What you need to do is to write down some guidelines and central elements that will serve as a foundation during the game and on which you can build upon to insert new elements. The only real boundary you have is the fantasy genre, but if you are playing this game that’s what you want, right?

Each of you has a say. Pour into the cauldron all your ideas and everything that seems cool, then blend it all try-ing together to get something coherent out of it. As al-ready mentioned, don’t go over too much planning and leave white spaces to explore. E.g. you might decide to play in a steam-fantasy world, outlining a huge industri-alized capital and an empire with ambitions of expansion. There’s no need of much more detail, the real important thing is that all of you agree about what’s decided since

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you’re going to use what you created as the basis for the character creation.If you want to, sketch some cities, con-tinents, islands and other important places.

3.2 Character creationWhen you have an idea of the fantasy world in which you want to play, each player takes a blank character sheet and starts creating his own character.

As a player, start thinking about your character by choosing an Archetype. You can choose an Archetype al-ready chosen by another player, but make sure you devel-op it taking a different approach to it. The only limit is your imagination.

There are three Archetypes to choose from, each repre-senting stereotypical figures of the fantasy genre. When you choose an Archetype you only need to know that your character will be extremely competent in everything relat-ed to it.

The Archetypes are:

WarriorYou are a master of combat. The battlefield feels like home, and the warm blood gushing from your enemies is your life’s reason. It does not matter if you are a brawny bar-barian or an agile swordsman, battle flows in your veins.

As a warrior there is no one as good as you in combat, in dealing with weapons and in war tactics.

MagicianYou spent so much time on those books that now an ar-cane power vibrates in your eyes, in your flesh, in your soul. The sky opens at your command, the rules of reality disappear and blinding thunders dart from the tip of your fingers.

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As a magician there is no one as good as you in the ways of magic, in spell casting, and so accustomed as you to the arcane mysteries.

ExplorerThere’s no unknown track, no forest too dense to pass through, no pockets too deep to steal from or places where you can’t find shadows to hide. Half thief, half hunter, you must trace a path in the night for everybody else to follow.

As an explorer there is no one as good as you in explor-ing, in stealth movements and in the use of roguish tricks.

3.3 KnacksKnacks are special abilities, skills, characteristics of your character describing his ways or something he excels in. They will help you when you enter a conflict, giving you some mechanical bonuses.

You start with 2 Knacks, use them to customize your hero by creating peculiar racial characteristics or special moves. Below you can find a list of Knacks, they are just examples, use them as a source of inspiration and try to create your own, just pay attention in making them easy to play!

Let’s see some examples:

Cold strategist: whatever the situation, you see your-self and your companions as pieces on a chess board, to be used in order to reach the maximum profit and checkmate your enemies.

Courage to spare: brave as a lion, nothing can make you scream with fear.

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Brute force: a normal human being would not be able to lift that boulder, you can do it without batting an eyelid.

Mind tricks: moving objects with your mind and com-municating with people telepathically? For you it’s nor-mal since you were just a few months old.

Acute senses: your eyes can see details invisible to oth-ers, your ears pick up sounds otherwise inaudible, your nose always knows when the air is breathable.

Flying: not just a matter of freedom, aerial fight has it’s perks, you know?

Musician: with the power of music you can charm minds, bewitch hearts and invigorate the souls.

Traps expert: you’ll never end up in a bear trap, nor will you ever need to run from a huge rolling boulder. What about setting a souvenir for your enemies?

A good way to create Knacks is to link them to your Arche-type, in order to further characterize it. e.g. if you decide to be an agile and fast Warrior you could create a knack exploring that concept.

3.4 Define your characterNow that you have your Knacks, take some time to bet-ter define your character. Go around the table: each of you takes a turn to describe your hero’s appearance and temperament. In doing so, give particular weight to the Knacks. e.g. If you chose “flying” as a Knack you could de-scribe your hero as having large feathery wings. If you’re a “cold strategist” don’t skimp on details about how de-

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tached and emotionless is your character. Do not talk about the past of your hero yet, limit yourself to his nature and physical appearance.

While describe your character, link the description to the type of setting you chose in the beginning. E.g. Steam-fan-tasy probably requires top hats and aviator goggles while Viking fantasy will probably be filled with horned helmets and fur armors.

3.5 Create the MenaceThe Menace is the dark force on the horizon, ready to tear the world apart, determined to plunge everything into a new grim age. It’s time to outline its contours and figure out what this entity is.

If you are the GM, you should invite the players to speak one at a time, starting from your right. Ask each of the players one or two questions about the Menace, like: “How did you learn of the imminent threat?” Or “Where does the danger come from?”.

If you’re one of the players, before answering the ques-tions try to picture your character in your mind. Think about his home and his profession. If you are a magician, you might have read something in an ancient tome. If you are an explorer, you might have seen the destroyed forests and the animals turned into feral demons by the Menace or its underlings.

During this phase, whether you’re the GM or one of the players, actively cooperate to outline the main moti-vations for the Menace. Be it ice demons, chaos lords, di-mensional spirits or whatever else, do not spend too much time figuring out the details, but define only what you re-ally need. A fuzzy image of what you will fight should be

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