How To Play Ecryme Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Ecryme. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Ecryme game at home. I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections. Game category Traits, skills, and specializations Rolling dice Spleen and ideal Difficulty and margins Self transcendence How to attack Impacts and dying Armor Effects Surprise Healing Helping allies Building a character Game category. The first edition of Ecryme was released in French in 1994. Twenty years later, a second edition was released, which is what I’ll be talking about today. The word ecryme is the name of a mercury like liquid that covers most of the surface of the planet. Only small dotted islands of land are left. This game’s world has 1800’s technology: mass production, steam power, and dirigibles. Air ships and steam trains link the industrial cities on the islands. Bridges lift the trains above the ecryme. The people of this world try to avoid falling in. Most people who come into contact with the dense, motionless ecryme, the flat silver ocean that lacks waves, are corroded by the contact, blistering like being splashed with acid. Those who survive sometimes get unpredictable cephalic powers, which is the game’s magic system. The general mechanic of Ecryme is that you roll six sided dice, add modifiers from your character build, and compare that to the difficulty of the situation or to an opponent’s roll. Outside of combat, you roll two six sided dice, add them together, and add the skill from your character sheet that most closely matches what you’re trying to do. If a trait applies, add it, too. When your character has a specialization that applies, you get plus two to your roll. The sum is compared to the difficulty of the task. Eight is the lowest and sixteen is the highest difficulty score. If your dice roll plus skill plus trait plus specialization is lower than the difficulty, then you failed. If your dice roll plus skill plus trait plus specialization is equal to the difficulty, there is some kind of complication. If your dice roll plus skill plus trait plus specialization is higher than the difficulty, you succeeded. Combat is similar, except you roll four d6 and add your skill. Pick two dice to put into success, which is their word for attack, and two dice to put into reserve, which is their word for defense. If your success attack is higher than your opponent’s reserve defense, you hit them. The amount your success attack went over their reserve defense becomes the damage impact of the attack. The Ecryme rule book comes with a ton of prebuilt character sheets for you to play as or use as pre statted non player characters. I’ll list some. There’s an aeronaut, an archivist, a sword duelist, a wandering mapmaker, a military officer who specializes in explosives, a courtesan, a stilt walker, a glider pilot, a wealthy merchant, an ecryme diver, a preacher, a fugitive, a scholar, an ecryme flower harvester, and more. Traits. Characters in Ecryme have traits that describe their physical appearance, personality, and social connections. Trait numbers range between negative and positive three. A normal person who is a nonplayer character averages about zero. A plus one means that your character has a little bit more of that trait than the average person. A plus two means they have a lot more than a normal person. A plus three means your character is extremely whatever that trait is. A negative one means that your character has a little bit less of that trait than the average person, a negative two means they have a lot less, and a negative three means they’re extremely lacking in whatever that trait is compared to someone normal. For example in the trait of height, a tall person would have the number one, a very tall person positive two, and an abnormally tall person positive three. Every character in Ecryme has two points overall in traits. This can be any combination that equals two. For example, your character could have a single plus two trait. Or they could have two plus one traits. Or you could have three plus one traits and one negative one trait. As long as the character has two points in traits overall, you’re good. There isn’t a set list of defined trait words in the Ecryme rule book that you’re limited to using. A trait can be anything you want. You the player name the trait that best defines your character, and you pick which combination of traits equals plus two overall. Skills. Every character in Ecryme has fifteen skills. Unlike a trait which can be anything you want, every character has the same list of skills, ...
Show more
Show less
Mar 18 20262 hrs and 28 mins