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What is Kleos? Kleos is a game where you play big heroes, who will ultimately meet an (un)timely end and look wicked cool in the process. Kleos is a game about your character, and his or her transformation into a living legend or martyr.
The Eight: a list of everything you HAVE to know about Kleos
1. It's a d6 success or fail, dice pool based system, which means its quick and flexible
2. Every player character has Passion, allows them to do really cool things, especially as they are on death's door, allowing them to pull off wicked heroic deeds, the likes of which are the basis for legends.
3. You get to decide what's important to your character, and who's important to your character and when they matter to your character.
4. All resolution is based on an opposed roll system, and a success-effect system, that lets you decide what happens, it also opens the the field to counter attacks.
5. Character building, Challenge building, and Opposition building are all super quick and easy, not only that but equipment is also simplified so all effects are easy to track.
6. Natural character development. Titles and tricks provide a way for your character to develop and deepen based on what her or she does in the game.
7. Tricks, a simple trigger based stunt system which can be used for any kind of conflict resolution, that allows your character to do some wicked cool things.
8. Player skill matters, you can set up devastating counter-attacks, tricks, or perfect defences by paying attention to your opposition.
Note: Kleos is still very much a work in progress, and any comments or advice you have is greatly appreciated, additional note, all Kleos material is copyrighted by me, and can only be used with my permission, please and thank you.
In Kleos dice are used to determine if a given action is a success or failure. Kleos uses 6-sided dice (d6)
There are two kinds of dice in Kleos, Test Dice and Bonus Dice. When you attempt an action you roll Test Dice, and tally the number of successes. A roll of four or greater on a d6 is a success, anything less than four is a failure. You may never roll more than seven Test Dice.
You may also get to roll Bonus Dice. The results of Bonus Dice are not tallied, but may be substituted for the result of a test dice. You may sacrifice three bonus dice to roll a single additional test dice.
Actions:
Spoiler
Taking Action:
When action begins, every player declares two actions they want their character to attempt. A player may declare more than two actions by using split actions. All characters can make an unlimited number of reactions. Actions are then resolved, with the action that with the most Test Dice going first. If two actions use the same number of Test Dice they occur simultaneously. Once all actions have been resolved, if the scene has not been resolved all players declare two further actions and the cycle continues.
Resolving Action:
All actions are resolved by way of spending successes. Both the actor and reactor roll their dice pools and tally successes. They may then spend their successes to affect each other.
Combined Actions:
If you are performing an action, which falls under the domain of multiple abilities, it is considered a Combined Action. When making a combined action average the dice from the abilities and subtract one Test Die from the result.
Split Actions:
You may choose to split one of your actions into multiple separate actions, and roll for each of these actions separately. This is called a Split Action. When you make a split action you calculate what dice you would roll if it were a single action, and then assign those dice to multiple pools, one for each action.
The game begins with character creation. Character creation is spread out over a number of steps to help guide you through the process. As you go through the steps take your time, and consider how the various parts fit together.
Step One: Backgrounds
Spoiler
The first thing you need to determine about your character is his or her background. This choice determines your hero’s race, and by proxy affects your hero’s social class. This is especially true in _______. However regardless of your background, your character’s Telos can be anything.
Each backgrounds grant a single dice to a single ability, out of a choice of two options. This dice does not allow you to exceed the limit of four starting test dice.
Pont (Natives):
Favored ability: Artistry or Willpower
The Pont are the native people of the isles, and have suffered greatly under the rule of the invading Mhjorem and Udeikter, who treated them as slaves. While some of the Pont are independent they still suffer a great deal of social stigma from the other two backgrounds who view them as naturally below them. Despite this unfortunate view, the Pont who are free make do well enough. The Pont have always had a natural gift for spiritual magic, as well as resisting the mental dominations of others, and were great practitioners of magic.
Traditionally the Pont were fairly pacifistic, with few among them taking the warriors oath, which absolves them of the deaths they cause. The Pont traditionally follow the unknown God, though some follow the outsider’s interpretations of the God. The language of the Pont is the commonly spoken tongue nowadays, only a few words of Mhauje are still spoken, and they are mostly used for titles.
Mhjorem (High-Born):
Favored ability: Fitness or Persuasion
Udeikter (Low-Born):
Favored ability: Agility or Deception
Step Two: Abilities
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Each hero beings play with nine dice to assign to abilities. A character may not have more than four dice in any ability. All abilities start with two dice.
Agility: Agility represents your character’s finesse, reflexes, and ability to perform stunts, which require nimbleness. Agility is also frequently used when your character is defending his or herself.
Artistry: Artistry describes your character’s ability to express his or herself in a creative medium, either through performance or through the creation of various works of art or tools. It also represents the technical knowledge of the arts, which allow an individual to judge the value and quality of workmanship. Artistry also provides the character with Passion, which allows him or her to alter the story in his or her favour.
Deception: Deception represents your character’s ability to deceive others, both mind and the senses. It also represents your character’s ability to perceive when others are trying to deceive him or her.
Eminence: Eminence represents your character’s force of personality; it allows you to manipulate the emotions and beliefs of others and to convince them to do, or believe something your wish them to. Eminence also represents your ability to resist mental influences such as fear, and other compulsions, both internal and external. Eminence provides your character with a Will score.
Engineering: Engineering represents your character’s ability to build create and operate complicated apparatus, including things like simple telescopes, locks or traps. It also represents a working knowledge of applied mathematics, allowing for the creation of architecture, and an understanding of rapid demolition. Engineering is also used when aiming siege weapons. It represents a working knowledge of physics.
Fitness: Fitness represents how healthy your body is, how well you can climb or run, and how strong you are, it also provides your character with Stamina, which allows him or her to push his body to extraordinary feats.
Knowledge: Knowledge describes what your characters know, either from book learning or from experience. It also represents how well your character can recall the information he or she knows, and how well he or she may teach
Nature Lore: Nature Lore represents your character’s ability to survive in the natural world; it represents hunting and foraging ability. The ability to track and notice changes in the world around him or her and the ability to tend to injuries. It also influences your ability to make infusions out of herbs.
Warfare: Warfare represents your ability to handle any sort of weapons, be they melee or ranged. Skirmishing also allows you to get a read on the capabilities of others, and whether a battle is going in your favour or not. It represents an overall intuitive understanding of the art of warfare.
Step Three: Characteristics
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History: To get a feel for your character the first thing you should do is draw up a quick outline of your character’s history, this will help for figuring out potential relationships, beliefs, and other characteristics. Once you have established where you character has come from you can begin to flesh out other important elements.
Description:
What does your character look like? Height; eye color; hair color and distinguishing features, all help to establish your character’s physical characteristics. What does he or she like to wear and how does he or she speak? What reaction do you want your character to provoke? Jot down a few words that summarize these reactions, as well as a short paragraph describing him or her.
Beliefs:
What does your character believe in? A belief should be a snapshot of the way your character thinks the world should or does function. It should be phrased in the form of a statement. Your character should have two beliefs, a Cardinal Belief, which cannot change, and a Secondary belief, which can be altered as the situation warrants. The Cardinal belief should be at the heart of your character, and you must have a long-term goal based upon it.
Personality:
Now that you have established what your character believes it is important to define how he or she acts. Your character’s personality defines this, you should write down a short list of adjectives to describe this element of your character.
Relationships:
Who does your character know prior to the start of the game? What is his or her relationship to these characters? Use this space to outline at least four characters your character knows either as friends, or rivals. Have a basic idea of why; you can flesh it out more in your history. Jot down names and a few details about each of these characters.
Goals:
Each session you should create a goal for your character, or you may choose to change your previously goal if it wasn’t accomplished. This goal should take the form of an action statement, eg. I will/will not do … Your goal should be something immediately accomplishable in the short term, preferably within one to two sessions, as when your accomplish a goal you gain one Passion.
Telos:
Your character’s long-term goal based on his or her Cardinal Belief is refereed to as his or her Telos. This goal should be the legacy your character wants to leave on the world. The accomplishment of it is what he or she will be remembered for. Anytime your character takes a risk for his or her Telos, he or she gains one Passion.
Miscellaneous:
Are there any details about your character you want to record somewhere but don’t seem to fit into one of the other categories, jot them down here, as well as information that comes up in play, that you want to remember.
Step Four: Attributes
Passion:
Spoiler
You character has a passion score; this score represents your character’s spirit and drive to succeed. You start each session with a minimum number of Passion points equal to your character’s artistry score, your character’s maximum passion is twice your Artistry score. Your character’s Passion increases when he or she works towards his or her destiny.
In game you may spend Passion to keep going while at zero stamina, or will.
You may also spend passion points when acting with regards to your relationships, beliefs or goals to receive a +1B on your roll. If you are acting for your Cardinal belief you may wager multiple Passion Points to receive +1B per point. If you succeed on the wagered you may keep all the wagered passion points. If you fail, you lose the wagered passion points and grant +1B on all rolls against you until you next gain passion points.
When you reach zero Passion you grant +1B on all rolls against you until you next gain passion points.
Stamina:
Spoiler
Your character’s Stamina score represents his or her ability to keep going despite tiredness or injury, or to perform extraordinary acts. Your character starts with a number of Stamina points equal to his or her Fitness. Your character’s Stamina can exceed this value through the use of drugs. Stamina is recovered only through resting, or by expending Will. When you rest you recover all stamina.
In game you may spend Stamina for one of the following effects.
• Declare three actions instead of two
• Convert a Bonus Dice to a Test Dice for a single roll.
When you character reaches zero stamina, he or she, is exhausted and cannot take any actions, except by spending passion. A character who is attacked while exhausted is killed.
Will:
Spoiler
Your character’s Will score represents your characters mental condition. How collected your character’s wits are and how easily you can resist mental shocks. Your character’s Will is equal to his or her Eminence score. Though it may exceed this value through use of drugs. Resting will grant you back all of your Will.
In game you may spend Will for one of the following effects.
• Call upon the God’s or Demons to intercede for you.
• Regain a point of Stamina or Passion; you cannot do this if doing so would increase the Attribute past its related Ability.
When your character reaches zero will, he or she is mentally exhausted and cannot take any actions except by expending passion.
Each hero begins play with three titles; these represent what your hero has already achieved. Example titles include, Apprentice Baker of High River, and Knight of the Crown. Your character may earn additional titles by performing extraordinary deeds. Whenever one of your titles is relevant to a given check you may roll a bonus dice on the check. Ex. Using knowledge learned from his time as a guard captain Marcus searches the scene for clues of who was present, etc.
Over the course of play your character will earn new titles. These titles are the way that your character develops so you should speak to your facilitator every session or two about your characters goals, and the general direction you want your character to develop. That way you and your facilitator can collectively create the titles your character receives, so that the titles represent the growth of your character. The way you want him or her to grow.
Step Six: Character Tricks
Spoiler
In addition to titles each character begins play with a character trick. This trick is an action your character is really good at. However you may only use your trick when opponents put themselves into a pre-defined situation. This is known as your trick’s requirement. A requirement should specify who the trick works on, and what situation they need to be.
Example Requirements:
• Useable when surrounded by multiple opponents who are wielding spears,
• Useable on an unobserved object under one ounce or
• Useable only when watched by five or more observers.
• Useable when your opponent protects his head
The player in collaboration with the Facilitator designs the trick. The less likely your requirement is to be fulfilled the more successes you may make your result worth. A typical trick has a result, which you spend four successes on.
A trick does not need to be one of your declared actions; instead you may use it as soon as its requirement is met. When you use your trick you don’t need to roll, you just apply the results of your trick to your opponent. Your opponent does get to react to your trick however.
Whenever your character does something really cool in game make sure to make note of it. That way you can have your character work on perfecting the action later, and turn it into a trick!
Character Trick, Example Format
Trick Name
Description
Target: Creature(s)/object(s) which, Requirement
Result:
Step Seven: Equipment
Wealth:
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Each character begins play with 45 silver coins to spend on equipment.
Coin Value Table:
Coin Type Value in Silver Coins
Gold 100
Silver 1
Copper 1/100th
Equipment:
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The character’s coins may be spent on a wide variety of equipment, which is useful in different situations.
Cost Caliber Caliber
4S Shoddy 0
20S Standard 1
100S Good 2
500S Excellent 3
All equipment is grants the user bonuses or penalties, these bonus and penalties come in the form of qualities. The number of positive qualities an item may possess is determined by its caliber. A caliber zero item, grants no bonuses, however it allows the user to perform a task her or she otherwise could not, a shoddy axe for example would allow the wielder to split wood, despite granting no bonus.
Equipment includes such objects as weapons, armor, tools and magical implements and other items, which could conceivably provide such bonuses. All equipment has a range at which is can be used, close, medium or far. Range is decided when the equipment is created.
Qualities:
Aiding: Equipment with this quality grants a +1B bonus to a specific type of roll. Such as offensive rolls, defensive rolls, rolls to open locks, etc.
Enhancing: Equipment with this quality produces better results than other equipment. Set a result this equipment is good at achieving. If you spend any successes on the set result increase the number of spent successes by one.
Gear:
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In addition to equipment, which provides a practical bonus to various different rolls, the characters will also possess, or come into the possession of various gear. Gear is anything that doesn’t fall under the equipment category. It includes such things as tents, food, wine, trading items, basic clothes, and other such practical and important things. All characters are considered to have gear with them, which would be dramatically, and narratively appropriate for whichever scene they are in. For example a character who prepared for a long journey and then set out would have gear, while a character who was run from town would be considered to have little besides the clothes on his or her back. The later character would be considered not to have gear. (re-)Outfitting a character with gear costs 20s. More rare or expensive items, such as trade goods, can and should be handled as if they are equipment, with no qualities, except an appropriate price.
Infusions/Drugs: {WIP}
Legacy Items: {WIP}
Spoiler
Characters will also obtain legacy items. These items are a physical way of showing all your character has accomplished. Legacy items can take the form of statues, houses, gardens, equipment used to perform great deeds, and more. You receive legacy items as rewards, or by purchasing them. Narrative effect.
Each scene should be assigned a scene difficulty based on how difficult you want it to be for the players to succeed. The scene difficulty determines the number of dice on average that you should be rolling for challenges. Subtract one dice off the scene difficulty for an easy enemy/task and add one for a hard enemy/task. You may wish to assign multiple difficulties to a scene, for different approaches the players might take, for example a scene might be easy to talk your way through SD: 2, but very hard to fight your way through, SD: 5. This system makes it easy to stat challenges on the fly, just set a SD, and away you go. Scene Difficulty is measured in Test Dice, as aside from the occasional title most challenges do not have any source of bonus dice.
Challenges and Opposition:
Creating Challenges:
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Most things your players want to do will be opposed by challenges. Challenges are anything, which the character must roll against. To create a challenge, just take the SD, and increase or decrease for an easier or harder challenge. All the challenges abilities should be equal to the SD. If you have multiple SD’s for different approaches, set the challenges abilities separately for each approach. For example a scene in which you confront a Vizer might have a combat SD of 2 and a talking SD of 5, and the Vizers starts should echo this, Eminence and Deception might be five, while Athletics and Warfare might be two. You can adjust approach SD’s separately, so the same Vizer might be a hard social challenge, SD 5+1 (6) and a easy combat challenge SD 2-1 (1). If this same Vizer had guards you might up the combat SD, and just make the Vizer a very easy combat challenge SD 3-2(1) or 4-3 (1).
Creating Opposition:
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In addition to challenges directly created from SD you may occasionally wish to create opposition for your players. Opposition can be anything from a facilitator character, to a particularly difficult trap, or facility. When creating opposition it is usually best to start with a SD in mind. Unlike with basic challenges however, the SD can generally be held at arms distance when creating opposition. What really distinguishes opposition from a challenge is that opposition will typically have tricks, a personality, titles, and other such sources of bonus dice. In addition opposition can spend attributes in the same way players can.
When creating opposition you should generally follow the steps used for character creation with a few alterations. In particular any part of the character creation process that doesn’t make sense for your opposition can and should be considered optional. Additionally you may spend as many points on building your opposition as you find necessary. A good guideline is (SD-2)*8, and you may grant your opposition as many titles and tricks as you feel are suitable, a good guideline is 1 of each per trick/title you've granted the players, or less for easy opposition.
Title Design:
Spoiler
When judging the relative strength of a title keep this guideline in mind. Each title should grant a bonus to two specific instances of one of one of the characters abilities. Ex. Painting (Artistry), or Lockpicking (Engineering). In addition the title should grant two or three situational bonuses, such as when interacting with certain people, or exploring a certain area, etc
Alright, so with all the actual material I have posted, I'd like to outline the parts that right now I need some conceptual help with.
First: I'm looking at trying to expand the section on legacy items, and create more incentives for players to let their characters die/fade to the background.
Possibly mentor/inspired effects for future character or something of that order. However if you have any ideas for other cool legacy rewards I can give I would greatly appreciate them.
Second: I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle social scenes, right now I'm handling them the same way as everything else, back and forth conflict resolution using success to affect your opponent, does anyone have any suggestions for alternate options or things I should do to make the existing system click a little better for social scenes?
Third: Obviously this is an early(ish) draft and is incomplete but I would love to know where there are problem sections, and if there are any areas where you don't understand what I mean.
Alright. Apparently nobody is particularly interested. No worries.
Is there anything I could do to make this more interesting? Have I put up to much content. Would it be better if I stuck with a short summary and just answered questions. Or are there just to many systems floating around for people to review them all.
I would really like feedback on this, and hey, maybe I won't get it here I'm okay with that, but I would love to know at the very least is there anything I can do to improve the way I'm presenting this to facilitate feedback, when I ask elsewhere?
@V It had fallen off the first page, else I probably would have waited a day or two longer before giving up on it.
I know. But it's somewhat discouraging when nobody comments.
Anyway. Big, as in MASSIVE changes. It's pretty exciting.
I've completely rewritten the basics, they're faster, simpler, require more player skill, and make characters with a focus on assessing opponents viable in combat. How cool is that! :small wink:
I've also rewritten the characteristics section, to help cut down the number of dice in play, and in conduction with this I've redone the attributes section, you get to spend passion to get bonus dice whenever when your characteristic comes up. It's simple this way. And it makes the mechanics more consistent.
And I've re-done tricks to go with the brand new action system in the basics.
Seriously this stuff is pretty new and shiny. You should check it out. If you just want a quick overview, the first post, and the basics section are all you need.
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