How to Play

In Adventure, players work together to overcome challenges, battle ferocious monsters, explore new worlds, discover hidden treasures, and, hopefully, save the day.

How It Works

The game follows a simple pattern.

1. The Game Master (or GM, the person running the game) describes a situation.
2. The player or players state what they want to do.
3. The GM describes what happens.

The most important phrase in Adventure is, “What do you do?”

What You Need to Play

1. Dice. Adventure uses a single six-sided die (or a D20 if you’d prefer). If you don’t have any dice, you can roll digital dice.
2. Character sheets. You can print them out from the downloads page or just write the details down in a notebook.
3. Your imagination. The most important part!

You might want to keep a pen and notebook handy, but it’s not at all required to play.

Creating a Character

Every player creates a character to play in the game.

The downloads section includes printable character sheets to guide you through the process, as well as premade characters. You’ll reference them throughout the game.

Players may want to use a toy, figurine, or paper cut-out to represent their character while they play.

Name & Description

You can be anyone you want to be in adventure: an elf wizard, a fairy tinkerer, a space cowboy, a dragonfly spy. Be anything you want.

Health

Every player starts with 10 Health Points (HP). This is your Max HP. Throughout the game, your HP will up and down as things happen.

Specialty

Your character may be good at a few things, but they specialize in one: Strength, Dexterity, or Wisdom. The thing you specialize in will help you complete certain types of tasks.

• Strength. Athletics, Intimidation, Feats of Strength
• Dexterity. Acrobatics, Speed, Stealth, Slight of Hand
• Wisdom. Perceiving, Knowing, Figuring Things Out

Armor

Does your character wear armor? If so, you’ll take less damage, but will have a harder time with tasks that require Dexterity.

Average Damage

When your character uses weapons, magic, or even their hands, they cause damage. Average Damage represents how powerful they are. Every player starts with an Average Damage (or AD) number of 4.

Features

What makes your character unique? Do they have a special skill, like fire breathing or the ability to fly? Are they a really good swimmer? Can they make themselves invisible or fly?

Gear & Treasure

You start the game with a simple weapon, wand, or tool; a travelers pack; and one healing potion. Magical characters should have a few simple spells. In your adventures, you may find, buy, or earn more cool stuff.

Rolling Dice

For most player actions, what happens is decided by rolling dice (either a D6 or D20, your choice).

You can choose not to require a die roll. Ask for a roll any time you want to add chance to an outcome.

Best Roll & Worst Roll

Items, special skills, and circumstances may give the player an advantage or disadvantage in attempting to complete a task.

Adventure uses Best Roll (BR) and Worst Roll (WR) to account for that.

• Best Roll. Roll two dice and take the higher number.
• Worst Roll. Roll two dice and take the lower number.

If the player has a specialty, feature, or tool that would aid them in their task, they can use Best Roll. If a condition would make it harder for them, they use Worst Roll.

If a player would get both Best Roll and Worst Roll, they cancel each other out.

Wisdom Checks

There may be information that the Game Master want to reveal to players selectively.

For example, when approaching the area where the thieves are going to attack, the Game Master can ask the players to roll a Wisdom Check. Any players who have a successful roll “hear the thieves approaching” and have a chance to take action before the attack.

The Game Master can also call for Wisdom Checks if the players ask for information about their environment that in real would depend on their own awareness of their surroundings or prior knowledge. For example, “Do I see anything out of the ordinary?”

Players who specialize in Wisdom take Best Roll on Wisdom Checks.

Spellcasting

For characters that know magic, casting spells works just like any other action. When casting a spell, players roll dice to see if it works or not.

There are two exceptions to this:

• For really simple spells that aren’t directly working towards a challenge (for example, lighting a campfire, or making an object glow to provide light), the Game Master can choose to skip the die roll.
• For really powerful spells, the Game Master may choose to limit them in some way. Maybe they can only be cast once per day, or they require a special, rare item (like a phoenix feather) to use.

Combat

While much of Adventure is focused on exploring and problem solving, you can introduce combat with monsters as a way to keep things interesting.

Combat in Adventure works just like any other player action.

• The player says what they want to do, and rolls dice
• The GM describes what happens as a result

If the player has a specialty in...

• Strength, take Best Roll on up-close/melee attacks and blocking defense.
• Dexterity, take Best Roll on distanced/ranged attacks and dodging defense.
• Wisdom, take Best Roll on magical attacks and defense.

Fleeing a Battle

Every now and then, players may find themselves in a battle they just can’t win.

Players can choose to flee a battle at any time, including in the middle of one. The Game Master may require a roll to determine what happens.

Teamwork

Adventure is a cooperative, team game. The more you work together, the more likely you are to succeed.

• For group tasks, like trying to cross a river or sneak into a castle, if at least half of the party succeeds, everyone does.
• For individual tasks, if you can reasonably assist a teammate, they get Best Roll.

Health & Damage

As an adventurer, you’re going to take damage from time-to-time. Cuts, bruises, and serious injury are a common risk.

Health Points

Every character and creature has a pool of Health Points (or HP). Health Points represent a creature’s overall health.

Whenever a character or creature takes damage, points are subtracted from their Current HP. When their HP reaches 0, they’re knocked out, and remain that way until another party member revives them.

Players start with a Max HP of 10. A character’s Current HP can never exceed their Max HP.

Average Damage

Every character and monster has an Average Damage (or AD) number that specifies how much damage their successful attacks cause.

On a successful weapon or spell attack, subtract their AD from the attacked creature’s HP. On an unarmed attack (just their hands or feet), subtract half their AD instead.

Average Damage is a guide for the GM, not a fixed number.

They might shift it up or down a little based on what’s happening in the story. They might cut it in half on a Partial Success roll, or double it if something truly epic is happening. The AD is an average, not a fixed value.

Players start with an AD of 4.

Armor

Armor and shields provide protection against attacks.

When a character or creature receives damage while wearing armor, they subtract 1-3 points from the damage received before reducing their HP. In the beginning, armor may only reduce damage by 1. It becomes more effective as players get more experience.

Protection from armor and shields only applies once. You cannot, for example, wear armor and a shield and double your protection.

While wearing armor or holding a shield, characters also take Worst Roll on Dexterity rolls.

Healing

When a player’s HP reaches 0, they’re knocked out and cannot continue to fight until they have at least 1 HP.

Fortunately, players can heal in a few ways.

• If you take a rest, you can recover your Average Damage number of HP
• Using tools like bandages or healing potion

When you heal, add the amount of HP healed back to your Current HP (up to your Max HP). Your Current HP cannot exceed your Max HP.

Leveling Up

As your character goes on adventures, they’ll gain new experiences and pick up new skills. Whenever the party does something particularly meaningful or awesome, the GM should level up the party.

When you level up…

• Increase your Health Points by +5
• Increase your Average Damage by +3
• Pick-up 1 or 2 new skills, spells, weapons, or magic items (at the GM’s discretion)

If you want, you can use the same character from one adventurer to the next, and bring their skills, gear, and treasure along with them.

House Rules

House rules are strongly encouraged in Adventure. Here are some ideas you may want to adapt to your game.

Pets

For added fun, characters can have a pet that accompanies them on their adventures and helps them along the way. This can add a fun dimension to the game.

Pets can be small and sensible (a cat, dog, or woodland creature) or large and absurd (a dinosaur, dragon, or elephant). A player’s pet can be used to get them out of a tough situation, as a weapon in battle, or just for added flavor and interest in role playing.

Tinkering

If you have an adventurer who loves to build things and has a big imagination, tinkering is an awesome special skill. A tinkerer can build small creations from bits of scrap metal and wood.

Here’s how it works.

• Tinkered items can be robotic toys, weapons, tools, and more.
• Tinkered items are small and fragile, and stop working after a few turns.
• Only one tinkered item can exist at a time.
• The parts from a tinkered item can be reclaimed to build another (either after it break, or when the adventurer decides they’d like to build something else).

The Game Master may choose to have the adventurer first acquire a tinker kit: gears, bits of scrap metal, and some small tools from a shopkeeper in the game.

Chaos Magic

For added fun, you can introduce magical items that randomly unleash a surge of chaotic magic and create random effects.

Some things that can cause chaos magic:

• Wands, staffs, and magical talismans, when used to cast spells or conjure abilities
• Weapons and armor, when used in battle
• Potions and herbs of unknown origin, when consumed

You don’t need to have random effects occur every time the item is used. In fact, it’s probably more fun if it happens occasionally. If you want, you can flip a coin.

Here’s a list of random effects you can use. Roll some dice to pick one at random.