Well, Merritt, I'm glad you've decided to live the outlaw life
with us here in Sherwood Forest. I can't imagine what sort of fun
adventures you'll go on, but I just wanted to give you the
heads up about how things work around here, especially since
I'll be going on my honeymoon soon.
As you know, I just got married to the most beautiful woman on
the face of the earth. Sorry, literally everyone else.
Well, whatever floats your boat I guess.
Personally I'd rather get kidnapped for sure.
Continue. Right, I figured I'd show you
the ropes about how everything works here in Sherwood.
I can't imagine you'd go off to, say, fight an evil wizard, for
example, but just a few tools of the trade I've picked up in my
many, many, many adventures. Well, I'm not exactly useless,
you know, I've picked up some skills in my life up to this
point, even if I am just 18. Right.
Your experiences and career up to this point are what started
off your character sheet. Of course this is a life path
character creation system. But then every outlaw in this
forest gets into some sort of trouble, and the longer you've
lived, the worse that trouble could be, and it could come
after you now that you're an outlaw.
So you've got your skills, you've learned the things you're
good at doing. But in a broader sense, some
people are strong, some people are fast talkers, and some
people are exceptionally lucky. And this all gets quantified in
four basic areas Endurance, wits, luck, and willpower.
Your endurance qualifies your physical ability, How fast you
can run, how far you can throw. Even dealing damage to your
enemies comes from your endurance if you use a blade or
a bow. Got it.
And I've got a lot of wits, so I'm guessing that's how you
figure things out, right? And willpower, That's how
stubborn and self controlled you are.
My mom always said that I had more of the stubbornness side of
that one. That's why I picked up arcane
talents and sorcery so easily. Right you are.
And the last attribute, and the most important for an outlaw, is
our luck, our intuition and good fortune.
One of the neat things about living in Sherwood Forest, in
contrast to those dungeons ruined to contain Dragons, is
that you can actually go above and beyond if you fail.
So if you missed that swing of a blade or get a bit tongue tied
when you're trying to sweep talk someone, you can actually spend
endurance or whip points to succeed.
But be careful, you can only spend 3 at a time.
That's the rule of three. All right, all right, so that's
the stuff I already had before Sir Timothy started chasing
after me. So how do we go about the outlaw
life? Well, if you want to try to do
something like stealing a horse or shooting an apple, or the
Sheriff of Nottingham with a bow, you roll 2D6.
An 8 or higher means you've got it.
Of course, unless you're some sort of Jack of all trades,
you'll be disadvantaged if you haven't ever practiced that
skill. What do you mean disadvantaged?
Do we roll an additional D6 and some malevolent game Master gets
to pick which two dice we use for the result, presumably the
two lowest? Exactly.
Of course, you can also have an advantage in cases where the
odds are explicitly in your favor, which works similarly.
What if it's something like dodging a rain of crossbow bolts
from the castle vaults when we've robbed the Duke blind?
Well, thankfully the GM doesn't roll attacks in this system, so
in that case you've got to rely on your stats and make a saving
throw. You can rely on any number of
your innate attributes, so you'll still roll 2D6, but you
want your result to be equal or less than your current score.
So if you've already gotten winded, succeeding an endurance
saving throw will be a bit tough.
You can always fall back on luck no matter what, and I know
you've got plenty of that. You can apply the rule of three
to spend luck if the dice aren't in your favor too.
But what happens if we're in a bad spot and can't hit the
number we need to roll well? You don't have any sort of hit
points. Your attributes are also just
reduced when you're damaged. Endurance is your usual one, but
you can grip your teeth of the pain with your willpower too if
you'd like. All right, so we can spend our
retributes to succeed on our roles and we can lose them
during fights if we take a hit, are they just going to be worse
forever? Nonsense.
Like all good things in life, you're always able and
encouraged to catch your breath. That's what it's officially
called, anyways. Catching your breath, You get to
spend some time chatting with your friends and recovering some
of your endurance, willpower, and wits.
Luck takes a bit longer to regain, so you'll need to wait
until the job's done to get that back.
Enjoying the spoils of our adventures is really the point
of adventuring together as outlaws, I should think.
So how do we spend our downtime around here?
Carousing. Hwy.
Robbery. Self improvement.
I should certainly say so. It's part of why I do what I do.
During downtime, the plots, plans and scheme of our foes may
also move on while we recover. At the start of your down time,
your lucky streak starts again at its original value and you
can rest up and recover. You'll also have some time to
talk amongst your friends and do other activities like, say, rob
a Stagecoach, teach yourself a skill, among other things.
Get creative. It's your down time after all.
Robin, I hate to be a bother, but your wedding carriage is
waiting for you to get in it right now.
Maid Marian is getting a bit impatient.
Bollocks, there's my ride. Well, I'll be leaving you in the
care of this priest, this drunken nun and this French
opera singer you've probably never met until just now.
Don't forget, my merry men, do not murder.
Got it. I'm sure this won't be relevant
at all. Tata.