The Basic
Mechanics
The Players and The World Builder
The game of Crytures is focused around a small group of players, one of which is designated as the World Builder. The World Builder serves as the narrator, the referee, the antagonist, and the supporting cast all in one. They eschew the chance to control a player character, in order to run the game and present challenges for the players to overcome.
Each other player controls a single character in the world, known as a Player Character, as well as the crytures that character owns. They are the heroes of the story, who react to the challenges and situations that the World Builder presents to them.
​
A Game of Minigames
Due to their free-form nature, roleplaying games cover a wide range, both of the activities you can do, and levels of abstraction they take place in. In Crytures, this is handled by breaking down various aspects of gameplay into different Scenarios that have their own sets of rules. Throughout a session, players will switch from one Scenario to another, depending on how they choose to interact with the challenges they come across.
The players may set out to search for the site of an ancient ruin, only to have a Random Encounter with wild crytures along the way. They may try to evade the crytures or confront them in a Battle Montage. Later, players may discover a camp of tribesfolk and engage them in Negotiation to trade for supplies. When they reach the ruin, they begin a Dungeon Exploration to search the site, and when they come across hostile inhabitants, they may try to sneak around them with a Stealth Encounter, only to be discovered, triggering a Tactical Battle.
​
Tactics vs Theatrics
Different Scenarios may cover similar circumstances in the game, but operate on different levels of abstraction to one another. A Tactical Battle, for example, is a way to resolve combat in high resolution, where positioning, teamwork, and turn-by-turn decision making are at the forefront. Conversely, a Battle Montage is a low-resolution way to resolve combat, where overall narrative is more important than the specifics. For important combat encounters, the high-resolution choice will provide more weight to the battle itself, while unimportant or easy encounters may be more appropriate in low-resolution, to keep the flow of the game moving. The players may choose which actions they want to take, but the World Builder has the ultimate say in which Scenario is most appropriate to resolve them.
​​​​​
Dice Rolls
Conflict resolution in Crytures is handled by rolling a handful of 10-sided dice, called the Dice Pool, which aims for a target number, called the Difficulty. Each die in the pool that rolls the difficulty or higher is registered as a Success, or a Hit.
Some rolls may require multiple successes to complete a task, while others may give bonuses for each success beyond the first. The number of successes needed to complete a task is called the Complexity.
If you fail to achieve enough successes, you may suffer a setback of some kind, or you may need to spend extra time, Stamina, or Mana in order to try again.
​
Dice Pools
When making a roll, you will be instructed - either by the World Builder or the rules themselves - to add some combination of stats together. Typically, this will be a Talent + a Skill for human characters, or a Stat + a Class for Crytures. Add any Die Modifiers to this number, and the result will be the number of d10s in the dice pool.
​​
Roll vs Die Modifiers
Certain situations may give you bonuses or penalties to your dice pools or the rolls of each die. These are distinguished as either Roll Modifiers or Die Modifiers.
​
A Roll Modifier is added to the results of each die within a dice pool. For example, let’s say you roll a dice pool of 6 with a +2 Roll Modifier, and roll 4, 7, 2, 6, 9, and 3. You then add +2 to each of those rolls, resulting in 6, 9, 4, 8, 11, and 5.
A Die Modifier adds (or removes) dice from a pool. If you are making a roll with a dice pool of 6, but get a +3 Die Modifier, that means you’ll roll 9d10 as the total dice pool.
​
Natural 10s and Critical Successes
When a die rolls a 10, before adding any modifiers, that is considered a Natural 10. Any time a Natural 10 is rolled, that roll counts as an automatic success, and if it would be a normal success as well, it counts as two successes. In combat, a Natural 10 is considered a Critical Hit, and it triggers the Crit effect of an attack, which usually adds another hit and may inflict additional effects as well.
​
Natural 1s and Critical Failures
When a die rolls a 1, before adding any modifiers, that is considered a Natural 1. If a character rolls more Natural 1s than successes on a single die pool, that is considered a Critical Failure. Successes still count as normal, but a drawback or complication results as well.
​
If you are using a tool or a weapon, a Critical Failure causes the item to break or be lost. Otherwise, a Critical Failure effect may be listed in the action's entry, or ruled by the World Builder on the fly.
​
Guaranteed Rolls
Some tasks are so stacked in one way or another that the outcome is a foregone conclusion and only the degree of success or failure is in question. Lighting a campfire with a fire cryture, attacking an unaware person, or identifying a cryture that you already own, would constitute a Guaranteed Success. Meanwhile, a Guaranteed Failure may arise when attempting to steal a man's pants while he's wearing them, convince a ruler to give you his mythic cryture, or jump a 100-foot-wide chasm.
​
When you roll for a Guaranteed Success, any Failures will still count as Successes, while normal Successes count as Critical Successes.
When rolling for a Guaranteed Failure, normal Failures count as a Natural 1, dice that would normally Succeed count as Failures instead, and Critical Successes only count for a single Success.
​​
Roll-to-Role Playing
Crytures is a mechanically-focused game, but these mechanics are made with a high level of abstraction in mind to give wide latitude in the way you role play your actions. For example, having a large dice pool when attacking with a bow may mean that you can rapidly fire off multiple shots, while a crossbow's dice pool may represent lining up a single, precise shot.
​
To maintain consistency between the mechanics and role playing, it's often best to role play the *result* rather than the *attempt* of an action. In a social situation, for example, your may give a rousing speech or compelling argument, but a poor roll may suggest a poor reception by the audience - or poor delivery by your character.
​​
Ultimately, the game mechanics exist to provide structure for resolving conflicts and challenges. There's no need to throw dice if neither of those are present.
​
