Most table-top role-playing games are about gaining power in some form. Players work to get better skills, weapons, armor, their max health goes up, and so on. As such, players in many TTRPGs get more powerful as the game goes on.
TARR is my exploration of the following question: Do table top role playing games need to be that way? TARR is designed with a few specific goals.
- Make it possible for a player's health to permanently decrease through the life of a campaign.
- Design the game such that the players may choose to do so deliberately without feeling cheated.
- Use player directed narrative and character drama to make that a compelling experience.
In TARR, players have five health. When they are at death's door, they can choose to lower their max health instead of die. As such, characters tend to get more fragile as the game goes on.
The other part of TARR is the Arc. Player Characters in TARR, or Leading Characters, have character arcs in the mechanics of the game. Arcs are your character's story, and they are also a statement to the World Keeper, TARR's DM, of what you want the game to be about.
So in TARR, you're goal as a Lead is to take your Leading Character to the completion of as many Arcs as you can,
before they lose their last point of health.
TARR
Errata and Revisions
As playtesters, editors, and friends have noticed, some mistakes were made in the production of the first version. These are issues that will be fixed in the next issue. Please feel free to incorporate them into your games as you play TARR.
- The Rapier is apparently not a dueling sword. I did not know this, and I will fix it. I'm not sure if I will remove the word "dueling" or the word "rapier". Some fix will be applied.
- In addition to other play examples, there is no example of a character doing something without invoking a Wager or Call-On.
- More examples could be used in general.
- The current layout of the examples is poor and can be difficult to read. I'm not sure whether I will go to the typical novel format of one character per line, but some change should be made.
- The game does not explicitly clarify the following: Fundamentally, to do something with your character, you say that you do it. Until the WK challenges you by asking for an invocation, you don't actually need to use your abilities. It was intended for that to be explicitly clarified.
- The game does not explicitly clarify the following: All harm is dealt as status effects. Your character's Health is the number of status effects they can carry without dying. Each status effect is always listed separately. Again, this was supposed to explicitly stated.
- Harm comes to characters primarily through unsaved collateral when Health is Wagered. Each unsaved point of Health Wagered turns into a status effect. Health does not go down. The only time Health does go down is during the death rule, if you choose to lower your max health.
- The wording on item mechanics is understandable, but it could be improved.
- The WK Book does not contain any commentary on what constitutes an 'acceptable' obstacle to an arc, or even in general. This will be added to the next version.(Create a Narrative Impetus for the players to act, and make bad things happen if they don't. Don't just destroy plot arcs off screen as an 'obstacle'.)
- The WK Book does not contain any commentary on how to build enemies' damage model. (Clarify the status effects that they can do, whether they can do Mortal, and Armor Piercing. Harm amounts are specified by the wagered collateral.
If you live near me in Troy, NY. I would love to get you a paper copy. Just ask, and please let me know what you think.