In The Mail

Recieved the below scrawled on a ruined postcard, shoved loudly through the letterbox just before dawn. It was written in tiny pencil letters and they are already fading. I was just about able to decipher what follows.

Dawn Guard Ruleset Not for distribution, play alone or in bright sunlight or in total darkness, let no half-light enter the room.

Metaphor

You cannot directly describe or relate any of the strange or unreal things your character sees to other players. Describing them makes them more real and more dangerous. Locating them precisely in time, in space or accurately in form or behaviour:- all of these things make your enemies more dangerous and call them to you.

Use metaphor. Fill your speech with quotidian reality. It will keep you safer.

Points

Everyone gets 13 points.

You have three stats, Body, Mind and Soul. Divide your points between them. 4 is an average person. 8 is very good. 12 is maximum human potential.

You can buy equipment that a normal person wouldn’t have at the cost of one point per syllable.

Everything else is just stuff that you (the player) have in your pockets right now.

Your combat value is 4. Your defence value is 2.

Your health is the sum of your body and soul multiplied by 5.

Rolls

There are three kinds of roll: Loach, Lynch and Tarentino

Loach - If it's something that could happen in a Ken Loach film or an episode of Eastenders, if its something you (the player) could do or have done, then roll 2d4 and try to get your Stat or lower.

Tarentino - If it's something that could happen in a Tarentino film or a Bourne movie, something you could do, but you're pretty sure you never will, then roll 2d6 and try to get your Stat or under.

The next one is a bit different.

Lynch - If its something that would happen in a David Lynch film or Surrealist movie, something you are not sure can be done or has ever been done before, then roll one d6. Add a Stat.

If you get a 10 or above you get what you want. 7-9 you get what you want and something else happens. On a 6 or below shit goes very wrong.

Time

Time is measured in panels, pages and issues. If its something that could happen in one panel of a comic then that,s what it is. If it would take a page then that's what it is. Same for issue.

Distance

Distance is measured as Breath, Touch, Whites, Shout and Shape. That's where you can feel someone's breath on your skin, touch them, see the whites of their eyes, shout to them or see their shape in the distance.

Speed is one or two. That's the distances you can move between in one panel. If your body is 8 or more then your speed is 2, other wise it is 1.

Combat

If two living things are contesting for something to happen (or not happen) both roll dice. Add a stat.

Attacker succeeds, Defender Fails – Thing happens, if damage then defender takes damage to the same value that the dice rolled.

Attacker succeeds AND Defender Succeeds – Defender chooses, take damage/allow event or let attacker choose non-damage result or non-success situation.

Defender Succeeds, Attacker Fails – no result, turn goes immediately to defender who then makes attack roll.

Both fail – BLOODBATH. GM chooses, damage everywhere and/or whatever added chaos they can come up with.