Risus - Core Rules - Rich Text Edition 2.0.rtf
RISUS
THE ANYTHING RPG
By S. John Ross
Welcome to Risus: The Anything RPG, a complete pen-and-paper roleplaying game! For some, Risus is a handy "emergency" RPG for spur-of-the-moment one-shots and rapid character creation. For others, it's a reliable campaign system supporting years of play. For others still, it's a strange little pamphlet with stick figures. For me, it's all three, and with this edition, Risus celebrates not only two decades of existence, but two decades of life, bolstered by an enthusiastic global community devoted to expanding it, celebrating it, sharing it, and gaming with it.
Character Creation
Grolfnar Vainsson the Viking
Description: Tall, blond, and grinning. Likes to drink and fight and drink and chase Viking women and fight and sail the high seas and raid. Wants to write great sagas about himself.
Powers, Tools, and Power Tools
In the course of adventuring life, lucky explorers may discover enchanted and/or cutting-edge and/or otherwise special equipment. The most basic sort is called Bonus-Dice Gear (such items let you roll an extra die, or more, when using them) but there are other kinds of "special" to be found, in the form of alternate game mechanics ("With this experimental piloting software, you can reroll any 1s"), in-world powers ("Only a Stradivarius can be used to seduce a Vampire Prince") or even mixed benefits and restrictions ("While wielding the Sword of Mercy, you always roll dice at least equal to your foe, but you must spare his life if you win.")
The Game System
Whenever anybody wants to do anything, and nobody's actively opposing it, and the GM doesn't think success would be automatic, the player rolls dice. If the total rolled beats (equals or exceeds) the Target Number set by the GM, success! If not, failure! Target numbers follow this scale:
5: A cinch. A challenge for a schmuck. Routine for a pro.
10: A challenge for a professional.
15: An Heroic challenge. For really inventive or tricky stunts.
20: A challenge for a Master. Nearly superhuman difficulty.
30: You've GOT to be kidding. Actual superhuman difficulty.
The Combat System
In Risus, "combat" is any contest in which opponents jockey for position, make attacks, bring defenses to bear, and wear down their opponent to achieve victory. Literally or metaphorically. Examples of "combat" include:
Arguments: Combatants wielding logic, stubbornness and cheap rhetorical tricks to make their point.
Horse-Racing: People on horses running around a dirty track, trying to get nowhere first.
Dogfights: Pilots in airplanes or spaceships trying to blow each other out of the sky.
Astral/Psychic Duels: Mystics/psionics looking bored or sleepy, but trying to rip each other's ego apart in the Otherworld.
Wizard's Duels: Sorcerers using strange magics, trying to outdo one another.
Dueling Banjos: Banjo players using strange melodies, trying to outdo one another.
Seduction: One (or more) characters trying to score with one (or more) other character(s) who is(are) trying to resist.
Courtroom Antics: Prosecution vs. Defense. The goal is victory. Justice is incidental.
Actual Regular Combat: People trying to injure or kill each other.
Eventually, one side will be left standing, and another will be left without dice. At this point, the winners decide the fate of the losers. In a physical fight or magical duel, the losers might be killed (or mercifully spared). In Courtroom Antics, the loser is sentenced by the judge, or fails to prosecute. In a Seduction, the loser gets either a cold shower or a warm evening, depending. While the GM will reject combat outcomes that make no sense in context (if you beat someone at tennis, you aren't normally allowed to decapitate them and drag their corpse through the city square), the spoils of victory are otherwise down to the choice of the victor.
Dice lost in combat are regained when the combat ends, at a healing rate determined by the GM (based on the nature of the attacks involved). If the combat was in vehicles (space fighters, mecha, wooden sailing ships) then the vehicles themselves are likely damaged, too, and must be repaired. Sometimes, healing takes not only time, but conditions specified by the GM ("now that you've been soundly defeated, you can't even look at your banjo until your girlfriend assuages your ego").
There's no standard time or distance scale in Risus; everything depends on context. In a physical brawl, each round might represent just a few seconds ... while in a long-term fight between a married couple, each round might represent an entire day (Day One: Husband "accidentally" burns Wife's favorite dress in the oven, Wife "accidentally" feeds Drano to Husband's prize goldfish, and so on).
When in doubt, assume the aggressor determines the type of combat. If a wizard attacks a barbarian with magic, then it's a magical duel! If the barbarian attacks the mage with his sword, then it's physical combat! If the defender can come up with an entertaining use of his skills, he'll have the edge. It pays in many genres to be the defender! But ... if the wizard and barbarian both obviously want to fight, then both are aggressors, and it's "fantasy combat," where both swords and sorcery have equal footing.
Teaming Up
Two or more characters may form a team in combat. For the duration of the team (usually the entire fight), they battle as a single unit, and may only be attacked as a single foe. There are two kinds of team: full-on Character Teams (for PCs, and sufficiently interesting NPCs) and Grunt-Squads (for nameless NPC hordes).
Victory & Defeat: With teams as with individuals, the victor determines the fate of the loser ... but when the loser is part of a team, his fate is generally reserved until the end of the team's existence (even if he's defeated while the fight rages on). So, if his team wins, his team - not their opponent - gets to decide. There are some fights where this won't be so, where the PCs are under such precarious circumstance that their fates must be resolved immediately. But, in most cases, being part of a team - especially a winning team - is excellent insurance.
Single-Action Conflicts
When Somebody Can't Participate
Advanced Option: Lucky Shots
Advanced Option: Hooks & Tales
With this Advanced Option, players can bargain for extra character-creation dice by giving their character a Hook and/or a Tale. A Hook is some signifigant character flaw - a curse, an obsession, a weakness, a sworn vow, a permanently crippling injury - that the GM agrees is so juicy that he can use it to make the character's life more interesting (which usually means less pleasant). A character with a Hook gets an extra die to play with.
A Tale is a written "biography" of the character describing his life before the events of the game. The Tale needn't be long (a page or two is plenty); it just needs to tell the reader where the character is coming from, what he likes and dislikes, how he became who he is, what his motives are. Some Tales are best written from the player's omniscient perspective; others are more fun if written as excerpts from the character's own diary. A character with a Tale provided before gameplay begins gets an extra die to play with.
Advanced Option: Pumps
Example: Rudolph the Ninja (3) is attacked by a Monster (6)! Rudy doesn't have much of a chance against such a powerful foe, so he opts for a tricky tactic: since the Monster is attacking physically, Rudolph decides his first-round response will use his skills as as a Cajun Chef (3) - a decidedly Inappropriate choice! He also opts to pump it by two dice to Cajun Chef (5), putting his all into his cooking!
Advanced Option: Character Advancement
Midgame Leaps: Anytime you do something really, really, really spectacularly entertaining that wows the whole table, the GM may allow you to roll instantly (in the middle of the game) for possible advancement, in addition to the roll(s) at the end of the adventure.
Credit Where It's Due
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