The Riddle of Steel

[Sutton]

This is a guide to the Roleplaying Game: The Riddle of Steel, from Driftwood publishing. It's quite a good game, I would reccomend you pick it up, but their online store has been out for months and they have shown no signs of activity, despite the hundreds, possibly thousand plus outstanding pre-orders for a book that has been "almost done" for more than two and a half years with no news. Thus I have few qualms about giving you guys the info when they don't even seem to want to bother to get their own act together.

The core mechanic of the Riddle of Steel is a dicepool d10 system, similar to that used in shadowrun, wherein you roll a number of ten sided dice based on your attributes, sometimes taking dice from a pool for the round. (Such as in combat, where you have Reflex + Weapon Proficiency dice available per round for maneuvers.) These dice are rolled, and each is compared against a TN, or Target Number, based on the task at hand or skill being used. All dice which have a result above the TN are counted as successes. As well, all dice upon which a ten is rolled are rolled again, and the results added together. (Thus, if I were to roll a ten, and then a three, the die would count as a thirteen.) This is important for very difficult tasks, such as health rolls against the black plague. However, it should be noted that this does NOT grant additional successes.

Character Creation:
The first step in any game is, of course, making your character.

Priorities	Social Class	Race and Sorcery	Attributes	Proficiencies	Skills	Gifts & Flaws
A	Landed Nobility (250gp)	Fey or Sorcery using Seihe	47	14	6/6	2 major gifts
B	Landless Nobility (100gp)	Non-magical Siehe, Gifted Human or Gifted Halfling	43	9	6/7	1 major gift
C	High Freeman (50gp)	Non-magical Halfling	39	6	7/7	1 major gift, 1 minor flaw
D	Low Freeman (15gp)	Human	35	4	8/8	1 Minor Gift and Minor Flaw or none
E	Peasant (5gp)	Human	31	2	9	1 major flaw, 1 minor gift
F	Prisoner or Slave (None)	Human	27	0	9	1 major flaw, 1 minor flaw

This is the priorities table. When building a character choose one element from each column and row. (Ignore the priorities column.)

For example, you can take Landed Noble and Gifted Human, but not Landed Noble and Fey.

Race:
Fey
Nigh-immortal, magically gifted elves, a dying race, only age as a side effect of magic

Seihe
All manner of dwarfs, sprites, etc. Come in sorcerous and not sorcerous varieties.

Halflings
Half man, half fey, these creatures are much longer lived than humans and have a relatively high chance of developing sorcerous talent.

Humans
The garden varienty. Most of the people of the world are humans, but only rarely do they have any magical talent.

Social Class:
Landed Noble
A true noble, these characters are the Liege-lord of some holding. They begin play with 250 gold crowns, and may earn 40 gold crowns a year from their estate, after factoring in the amount claimed by the appointed steward

Landless Noble
Those of noble birth with no claim to any particular holding. They may earn 1d10x10 gold crowns per year working as a freelance knight, and begin play as with 100 gold crowns.

High Freeman
The upper class of the non-nobles, includes many rich merchants and clergyman. They begin play with 50 gold crowns, and typical wages amount to 4d10 gold crowns per year when employed in a full time job.

Low Freeman
The urban common folk, they are the craftsman and working folk of the growing cities. They begin play with 15 golden crowns and may earn a monthly wage of 1d6 gold year for a full time job.

Peasants
The serfs are poor. VERY poor. Their total cash at start is worth 5 golden crowns, and those who work on their lords estate recieve a "wage" of poor food to eat and a roof over their heads. They can also scrounge up 1d10 silver shillings once or twice a year from excess or stolen goods.

Slaves
Slaves have NOTHING. No weapons. Mere rags for clothes. No money. Good luck.

[Sutton]

The Attributes

The attributes priority determines how many attribute points your character will receive to fill their various attributes. These attributes are spent at a 1:1 ratio to buy attribute points. There are ten attributes. None of their functions are that hard to understand from the titles, so I will post just the names for now.

Strength
Agility
Toughness
Endurance
Health
Wits
Mental Ability
Will Power
Social
Perception

As you can see, nothing too shocking here. The main thing that requires explanation is the difference between Wits and Mental Ability. As I understand it, Wits is more involved in things like mental reflex and reaction times, whereas Mental Ability is more about ability to learn and retain knowledge and skills. It also has a major effect on skill advancement. It is, however, not directly responsible for intelligence or cleverness. THAT is up to the player to provide.

You may spend the points however you like, with a few restrictions:

All attributes must be between 2 and 7, before nationality modifiers, and your highest attribute must be higher than all others, again pre-nationality modifiers (IE: No having Strength and Toughness both at 7 at start)

Reflex = (AG+Wit)/2
Aim = (AG+Per)/2
KD = (ST+AG)/2
KO = TO + WP/2
Move = (ST+AG+EN)/2


Proficienies

Your proficiency points buy dice in proficiencies at a 1:1 ratio, they may also be spent on magic vagaries (more on that later).

Your cap in any given proficiency is 7 (8 if you put A in proficiency)

The profiencies are:

Sword and Shield
Covers the use of a one handed sword, typically an Arming Sword (Longsword to the D&D types) and a shield. May be used without shield without any penalty, though obviously any shield based maneuvers are impossible.

Greatsword/Longsword
Covers the use of a two-handed sword, from estocs and bastard swords to longswords and greatswords. Has a large variety of maneuvers.

Cut & Thrust
Covers the use of a lighter sword, used for both cutting and thrusting in equal proportion (hence the name). Offhand daggers or bucklers are very common, but by no means required. Became common historically in the late 15th century after firearms were making most heavy armor obsolete.

Rapier
The rapier is a long, largely thrusting only sword, ill-suited to the battlefield due to its inability to pierce armor or parry heavier weapons, but very common as a civilian weapon among the upper classes in the 16th and 17th centuries. (Indeed, perhaps it became common as a civilian weapon precisely because it wouldn't work well on the battlefield, so they didn't make the local militaries antsy about the civilians being well armed) However, don't discount it as being ineffective, as the rapier can be quite deadly against less armored opponents. Commonly used with an offhand dagger (Such as the Main Gauche) or buckler.

Case of Rapiers
The thrusting only attack line of the rapier makes fighting with two of them possible (ordinarily, fighting with two long weapons is incredibly impractical), leading to the style of having one in each hand. You gain the flexibility of being able to strike and parry similtaenously or to strike in multiple locations at once, at the expense of having a backup weapon for close ranges easily availiable.

Doppelhander
The mother of all swords, the doppelhander is a positively MASSIVE two handed sword that saw use on the battlefield in the 16th century. They were commonly used to break pike formations in battle, anecdotally being described as cutting the heads of pikes, though it would seem more practical to bind a few pikes together and then have your allies charge into the gap created, as even a pike without a tip could be a deadly weapon.

Pole-axe
This proficiency covers large two-handed axes or occasionally warhammers. They are quite powerful, and more effective against armor than a sword, though defensively they tend to be less effective than a sword.

Polearms
From staves to spears to halberds to voulges, this is the proficiency to go for. Polearms have the advantage of great reach and versatility, at the expense of low effectiveness when the opponent is inside their each. In general, these were the most common battlefield weapons by far, as they combine an effective reach advantage and simplicity of usage (You can hand most medieval peasants a spear or pitchfork and they will be able to fight decently well) in a low-cost package.

Mass Weapons and Shield
This proficiency covers using weapons such as axes or warhammers with shields. In general, if it is far heavier on the striking end then on the handle, it is a mass weapon. They use leverage and a concentrated mass to impart much more force in a small area than a sword strike, leading to great efficency versus armor (Not much pierces armor better than a good pick, and with a mace or hammer you don't need to pierce their armor to deal massive damage) , though their imbalance makes them hard to parry with, making them great options for use with a shield.

Dagger
A typical knife. Carried by almost everyone in the medieval period. Short reach, but quite deadly in it's own way. As well, it carries with it some fighting and grappling experience, as fights at close range often involve hand-to-hand combat.

Brawling & Wrestling
Do I really need to tell you what these proficiencies do? In general, brawling is more efficient at kicking and punching, whereas wrestling is better for grapples.

[Sutton]

At Sean's request, as a result of Driftwood completely falling apart I'm posting up various additional information to aid him in running TROS fights. The "Riddle of Steel" arena tutorial fight series will continue as soon as the current match is over.

www.lemuria.org/tros/DamageTables.pdf - Here, we have the hit location and damage tables, in PDF format. Quite useful. (Contains some rather crude content, namely involving the damage tables for a specific "weak point", but nothing overly explicit.)

As well, I'll be editing up my previous post to include the new proficiencies, as well as the game rules for proficiencies. If it is well received I may even copy down the Defaulting table.