QUEER WOMAN FEELING TERROR SINCE 1992

THE ORDER OF EXECUTION

"Your Order of Execution is at hand.
Who will be at the end of the sword?
The monster you seek,
Or the monster you are?"

The Order of Execution (working title) is a gothic horror ttrpg where players are conscripts of the Church, branded with the Mark of Augury and given an Order of Execution that sentences them to death, to be fulfilled either in the line of duty or when they no longer serve their purpose.

The prisoners are tasked with rooting out heresy, abominations, and all forms of devilry. These threats draw heavily from gothic and weird-science fiction, such as the grandmother of science fiction, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Fromsoft's Bloodborne, and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I'm intentionally avoiding Lovecraftian or Cosmic Horror in this game, even as I draw from works like Bloodborne, as, while I enjoy it, I find that it dominates much of horror games as of late, and I want to maintain the particular dread I personally enjoy of gothic fiction.

Design-wise I look heavily towards and Chris McDowall's Mythic Bastionlands to the point that this is essentially a hack of his game. I also borrow a bit from Evil Hat's Monster of the Week, which has been my favorite game to run.

Terms, Definitions, and Rules

Warden. The person running the game. The game master.

Players. Refers to both the players and their characters, although PC (player character) is also used to strictly refer to your player’s characters. In-game, they are referred to as the condemned, the prisoners, or the conscripted.

Actors. Non-playable characters, both malevolent and benign.

Hazards. Actors, locations, objects, and situations that pose a threat to the players.

Horrors. Specifically tagged hazards that are particularly threatening or frightening and require a Volition save in order to confront directly.

Under Pressure. The state that the players are in when they are directly under threat by a hazard.

Merits. The three stats, Volition, Lucidity, and Somatics, that come into play when players make a save. Each merit has a maximum, the highest it can go, and a score, where the number currently rests.

Merit Loss/Merit Gain. Refers to when a player’s merit scores rise and fall during the course of the game.

Save. Each merit represents a different save that can be required during particularly challenging situations. To succeed, players need to roll at-or-under that merit’s score.

Catastrophes & Triumphs. When you roll a pool of dice higher than 1d, if you roll at least two ‘1’s, that is a Triumph and you automatically succeed. However, if you roll at least two ‘6’s, that is a Catastrophe, and you automatically fail. Every 1 and 6 cancel each other out in a single roll in regards to determining whether a Triumph or a Catastrophe has occurred. If you roll three ‘1’s and two ‘6’s, the roll is still a Triumph, but if you roll two ‘1’s and two ‘6’s, they fully cancel each other out.

Tension. When players fail a save or when they put themselves into a bad spot, the Warden can introduce tension. A tension is a disadvantage, such as dropping something, making too much noise, an enemy Actor entering the situation, etc. If the players roll a Catastrophe, the tension can even harm the players’ Somatics directly, known as Hard Tension.

Break. When the players roll a Triumph, they can introduce a break. Think of it like the opposite of a tension, where they can introduce an advantageous element to the scene, such as their enemies are suddenly hesitating leaving them vulnerable, or they find what they needed, or they can even regain 1d6 Volition.

Breath. Your first line of defense against taking damage, and can be spent while Under Pressure in order to ease saves. If you take a hit that goes over your current breath score, any remaining damage goes to your somatics.

Out of Breath. When Breath is 0, you are then vulnerable to taking damage to your somatics score and cannot spend Breath on saves.

Catching Your Breath. When you lose Breath or you are Out of Breath, you need to be able to take a few seconds to catch your breath, which instantly refills your Breath score to maximum. While Under Pressure, the players need to create a situation where they are able to catch their breath, such as running into another room and barring the door.

The Church. The religious body that holds power over the City.

The Order of Execution. The sect of those who have been sentenced to death by the church.

Mark of Augury. The brand the church places on the necks of those who have been condemned to the Order of Execution.

Wonder. A piece of strange technology or a relic of religious importance bound to a condemned.

Story. Your player’s Story is who they were before being sentenced to death. Essentially their class.

Merits & Death

Each merit implies the current state of the player characters.

Volition determines morale, willpower, and courage. Lucidity determines focus, precision, and clarity of senses. Somatics covers physical ability, reflexes, and fitness.

Each one is a number pool with a maximum number determined at character creation, and a current score, which is the target number for saves. As the players survive through the nights, their merits will ebb and wane from a variety of sources. A merit cannot go below 0.

Merit gain and merit loss is typically 1d6, unless otherwise stated. To "restore" a merit is to replenish it fully.

Players make saves when there is something at risk and it is possible for them to overcome it.

Volition saves are triggered when being exposed to a Horror or a demoralizing situation and needing to be brave in the face of it. Volition merit loss occurs when the player fails any save aside from Death saves, damages a bond they have with another PC or actor, or witnesses something that can damage their faith. Every Story has a rule for how that character would replenish Volition, but merit gain can be invoked by taking sacrament.
Lucidity saves trigger when the player is Under Pressure and trying to accomplish something complicated, such as picking a lock, reading a room for danger, or otherwise needing to act quickly with accuracy. This is also known as a Pressure save. Lucidity loss occurs when sight or hearing is impaired, the player becomes intoxicated, or they go a day without sleep. Gain Lucidity from rest or taking stimulants.
Somatics saves are triggered when the players are surprised by a hazard, defending against an attack, or need to perform a feat of strength or athletics. Somatics loss occurs when the players take damage while Out of Breath. Gain Somatics from rest or taking medicine.

Rest is when the players are able to relax, out of harms way for up to 8 hours.

When a player's Volition reaches 0, their damage is halved, rounded down, and they cannot pass a Death save.

When a player's Lucidity reaches 0, they are considered to be Out of Breath.

When a player’s Somatics reaches 0, they fall unconscious. Every unconscious player and actor are considered to be Out of Breath.
While unconscious from hitting 0 Somatics and under pressure, the player triggers a Death save that is always 2d6 vs Volition.
If you succeed, you are stable until you are no longer under pressure or you take another hit from a hazard.
Every successive hit you take while continuously unconscious raises the difficulty of the Death save by 1d6.

Each player possesses within their souls something known as the Death Gate, the barrier between life and death. Every living being’s Death Gate starts with four seals.
When a player fails a Death save, they may choose to break a seal to instead succeed on the save. If they no longer have seals to break, they must succeed on their rolls or die their final death.

If the player rolls a Triumph on a Death save: Somatics are set to 1, they are no longer Unconscious, and they regain all their Breath. However, rolling a Catastrophe means they need to break 2 seals in order to succeed at the Death save.

Once a seal is broken, it cannot be repaired.

Saves and Difficulty

Typically the players only need to roll when they are making a save. Each merit describes when a save would come into play for that merit.

When rolling, players roll a pool of xd6 dice, where x represents the difficulty of the task, and try to roll at or under the target score of the merit that they are tasked with saving against.

Difficulty starts at 2 and can be raised or lowered by player preparedness tension, feats, or whether or not the players outnumber their foes.

If a roll’s difficulty is 0d6, then no roll is required and the player automatically succeeds. If the maximum number possible on a roll is lower than the player’s current merit score, or if the amount of dice is higher than the merit score, they must still roll to see if a Triumph or Catastrophe occurs as long as that dice pool is greater than 1.

Each hazard has a difficulty score ranging from 0-4, which comes into play when determining the difficulty of a save.

If players are confronting a lone hazard, they add its difficulty to the save. A difficulty 1 hazard turns a 2d6 roll into a 3d6 roll.

However, if the players are outnumbered by the hazards in a scene, then the difficulty goes up by 1 until the number of hazards is equal to or lesser than the number of players in that scene.

Players can also spend up to 4 points of Breath to raise their target score for the save (this is not the same as merit gain) before the roll takes place. After the roll the target score returns to where it was before the roll (any merit loss as a result of failing the save is still applied).

Example of Play:

Four players are in a room with four undead and a bomb in the middle of the room ticking away towards an explosion. Five hazards.
Each undead has a difficulty score of 0 because they’re slow and not very bright, and the bomb itself is also difficulty 0 because it's very simple and just needs to be turned off.
Because the players are physically outnumbered by the hazards in this scene, even though all the difficulties are 0, any saves taking place here will be increased by 1 to 3d6.

The difficulty of a hazard itself only comes into play for a roll when it is the hazard that causes the save in the first place. For instance, in the above example, if the bomb had a difficulty of 2, the roll for the save to disarm it would be 5d6 vs Lucidity: 2d6 as the base number, 1d6 for being outnumbered, and 2d6 for the bomb’s difficulty.
However, if any of those difficulty 0 undead tried to bite you in that room, the save to push it away would just be 3d6 vs Somatics.

Combat

When Under Pressure, the players decide on what they will all do, with enough time to move within the equivalent of a large room and perform a simple action, remain stationary and perform a complicated action, or to move much further without taking an action.
They then perform these altogether, followed by the hazards doing the same.

To fight a hazard head on, face-to-face, the players roll a Combat save, which is xd6, where x is the difficulty. The merit for this save is Somatics.
Failure of a Combat save results in the loss of 1 Volition, and any damage dealt can only go towards an enemy’s Breath, and not their Health (enemies only have Difficulty, Health, and Breath scores). This means that even if you do fail, you can still harm the enemy in some way.

A Triumph on a Combat save allows for a feat to be performed, plus a merit gain of 1 to Volition.

A Catastrophe on a Combat save results in the loss of 2 Volition, plus a tension that can harm Somatics directly.

Up to 4 points of Breath can be spent on a Combat roll to increase the target score for that roll.

Roleplaying (odds n ends)

There are no rules for social interactions. If the players are going to lie, the lie needs to be at least a little convincing and not be absurd. If the players are trying to negotiate with someone or pressure them, they need leverage, whether it's valuables, credible threats, or pulling in a favor.

The condemned are regarded as the lowest caste of society, and most people will refuse to take them at their word, meaning that leverage is all the more important.
They will recognize condemned by the Mark of Augury branded on their necks, which gently glow a pale green under moonlight.

When hiding or escaping from a hazard, the players need to ask questions and be aware of their surroundings, describing how they hide and sneak or escape while making an argument for why it could work. Then it is up to the Warden to decide if it works or not.

Stories to be added soon!