What is Riverlands Rolls?

Riverlands Rolls is the system we use for our online Dystopia Rising events. It is used anytime you go out on a mod or find yourself in a fight. This system was inspired by Bravado Bones, a system created by Sam Mars.

Riverlands Rolls is narrated, and led by Guides. Groups of players can find themselves using this system in a mod or in the middle of a fight. Your Guide will prompt your decision on how you interact with such encounters.

How do I get started?

Your character is broken down into specific sections. You will use your Dystopia Rising: Larp Character sheet to convert your character into the Riverlands Rolls. We also send out your sheet in a pdf document just in case you are unable to access your character via the database.

How do I build a character?

Stats: For every 5 points in Body/Armor/Mind/ you get 1 Point on your Character Sheet. Resolve is Counted as Normal.

Skills: For every 3 skills you have purchased in a Skill Category you get a +1 to any action you take in that category. This bonus is capped at a +5. Players start out with the base combat skills giving them a +1, they do not count for the additional bonuses. Players can choose to start with a +0 to combat skill for RP reasons. Skills determine what you are capable of, but the skill roll determines how successful you were on the attempt.

Body/Armor: This determines how much damage your character can take before falling into bleed out. If you hit 0 Body you begin to bleed out and cannot take actions until someone stabilizes you. For the purposes of the story you will not bleed out and die during a conflict unless everyone in the conflict also falls into bleed out.

Spending Mind: You can spend mind points anytime during a conflict to increase your roll or an allies roll by +4 per 1 mind spent. This can be done after the roll has been completed. For every PFA you have in the category you add an additional +1 to that increase. IE: Fyre Sol is a Bad-Ass and Battlefield Commander. If he were to spend a Mind point, he would increase his Combat roll by +6.

Resolve: You can spend 1 Resolve to increase the success of any roll by two ranks. So if you rolled to attack someone and you failed the roll, you can spend a resolve in order to increase it to a normal success. If you rolled to attack someone and you got a partial success you can spend a resolve to increase it to a master success. Resolve is not regained between conflicts or modules.

PFA’s: These are bonuses that can be tagged by a Guide running a mod to give you a +2 to any roll that your PFA may pertain to. These also increase the bonus you get for spending mind in a category by +1.

Societies: These are bonuses that can be tagged by a Guide running a mod to give you a re-roll on one of your conflicts. You can use your society membership after you see the results of the first roll, but these can only be used once per mod.

Lores: These are bonuses that can be spent by a player to get a +1 to any roll that your lore may pertain to. These can be spent multiple times during a mod.

Tags: These are bonuses that can be tagged by a Guide running a mod to give you a +2 to any roll that your Tag may pertain to. These also increase the bonus you get for spending mind in a category by +1 if applicable.

Threats: These function similar to Tags but instead of giving you bonuses to your rolls they give you penalties. Each Threat can be tagged by a Guide running a mod to give you a -2 to any roll that your Threat may pertain to.

Pips: These are one-time use items that grant you a temporary +2 to any Skill roll once. Once this is used it is then removed from your character sheet and cannot be used until you obtain another one. You must declare you are using a Pip before you make your roll. A player cannot have anymore than 3 Pips at a time.

The Character Sheet

Below is a blank character sheet and one filled out as an example of what your character should look like in the system.

How do I play?

The Guide will give narrative descriptions of the situations, characters, threats, and the environment that the players will be able to interact with. Characters may use their stats in order to overcome the conflict that you will face on modules. When a module begins send your character sheet to the Guide running the mod.

This system encourages players to describe your character’s actions and to collaborate with other players to create a scene for everyone involved. Your item cards and skills help determine the narrative of what your character is capable of, but they don’t directly affect your character sheet unless the Guide decides to give you a bonus due to the circumstance of the situation.

Every time you enter a Conflict you start with full mind and body, unless the plot, you the player, or guide decides that the story would change this.

What actions require rolls? Well, simple tasks do not require a roll, but difficult actions like shooting a target, disarming a trap, tracking down a creature, or tricking someone into admitting information will require a roll. When a player takes any difficult action the Guide will tell you to roll from one of your skills. This is considered a Conflict. You then roll 1d20 and then add any modifiers you may have to the skill.

Conflict and Success

Conflict: Whenever you engage in a conflict you roll 1d20 and add your bonus from the Skill Type. A 1-6 is a failure, 7-12 is a partial success, 13-17 is a normal success, 18+ is a master success.

Ranks of Success:

Failure: If your character got this result then you failed whatever action you attempted to do, sometimes this may come with a negative side effect that the module. Oftentimes this leads to damage. You can also gain Threats from Failures.

Partial Success: Your character succeeded! Well… kinda. You did succeed, but there was some complication that came up. Sometimes this complication is taking damage, other times it's damaging the item you were trying to steal. Sometimes it's slipping through the vent, but banging your head loud enough for everyone to hear. You may also gain Threats from partial successes.

Normal Success: Your character succeeded in the task and there weren’t any complications along the way. This success will be narrated by the Marshal running your module.

Master Success: Your character succeeded in ways that few do. Not only did you succeed but you did so with the best possible outcome. The success will be narrated by you! (Don’t get too carried away!)

Injuries and Exhaustion

We have two specific types of Threats that work differently than the other Threats. These threats can’t be tagged by a Guide but instead offer a passive penalty to your Skills.

INJURED: This Threat can be obtained from ZOMs or mods and reduces both your Combat and Wasteland Skills by 1. This penalty stacks with other instances of this Threat and has no limit.

EXHAUSTED: This Threat can be obtained from ZOMs or mods and reduces your Civilized and Anomaly Skills by 1. This penalty stacks with other instances of this Threat and has no limit.

What else is there?

Players may spend mind points to increase the results of the dice roll after they see the results of the roll. You can also spend mind points to upgrade the results of another player's results as long as they agree to the help. Whenever characters compete against one another, they perform a roll in the Skill Category and the highest number wins. Characters that go to zero mind gain the [Exhausted] Threat.

Whenever a character has zero body left, they enter a bleed out and cannot take actions. Any other character may spend a mind point and make a Civilized or Anomaly skill check to attempt to heal the player. A Partial Success heals them for 1 point of body. A Normal Success will heal them for 2 points of body. A Master Success will heal them for 4 points of body. At the end of the conflict any Character with zero body will heal back up to one body, unless all characters involved are also at zero body. Characters that go into bleed out gains the [Injured] Threat.

During modules, Guides may give players a bonus or a drawback. This could be a +1 or -1, or could be more severe depending on the story and condition of the characters. Some of these could be making you roll at disadvantage (roll 2d20 and take the lower of the two). These bonuses can be given due to story, gear, tactics, or other reasons.

Online Economy

How does our online economy work? Well we function of a time based system. All players start with 4 hours total (You can only split this 4 hours across all 3 characters if you have an Advanced Membership). You can use any combination of items, room augments, and skills to build, crafting, or farm resources or reduce the time an action takes.

Any action that does not have a time listed takes 5 minutes. This includes, trading items (Limit 10 Named Items in any quantity per trade) to other players, using items like the Goat Cycle, The Elitariat Advantage, Proficient Financial Influence, Trade Connections (5 Minutes per skill level, augmenting this with items doesn’t not increase the time cost) and other skills/effects in this vein. Each player is sent a spreadsheet that fill out to use their 4 hours.

Players can gain more resources by participating in mods and completing ZOM’s. These are typically listed at the completion of said ZOM or Mod. When you complete these you will fill out your sheet with MOD - The return of Billy Bob or ZOM - Explosive Ordinance and list the resources gained and zero time spent.

Players can use physical item cards for effects (The Goat Cycle, Freeiron Field Journal, Candlepin Dehydrator) or can spend physical item cards on crafting items. These items do not need to be mailed to us as we will deduct them from your LIT and you can turn them into your home chapter to offset the deduction.

*Note: The Paradigm Print Workshop cannot be used on local blueprints, but may be used on all National Blueprints.