Episode Details

How to play Travel Sized Role Playing Game (TSRPG)

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 Travel Sized Role Playing Game, abbreviated TSRPG. 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 Travel Sized Role Playing Game.

I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.

1. Game category

2. Combat rules

3. Equipment

4. Annoyed, wounded, disabled, killed

5. Building an example character

Game category. TSRPG is designed to be, well, travel sized. You can teach others how to play and build a character with them in under ten minutes. TSRPG can be played using any setting, anywhere, anytime. You can play it without dice, for example on a long ride, or sitting around a campfire.

Combat rules. Combats in travel sized role playing game are a series of challenges. A player can attempt a challenge to harm an opponent or to defend against an incoming attack. To resolve the challenge, the storyteller either rolls a number or picks one to themself quietly, and says the difficulty range out loud. The player picks a number. If the player’s number either matches or is within their stat number’s range of the storyteller’s number, then the player succeeds at the challenge. If the player’s pick for a number is further away from the storyteller’s number than even adding or subtracting their stat doesn’t get them there, then the player failed the challenge.

Here is an example of a challenge. A player says their character Ruben swings a sword at the dragon. The storyteller picks the number 2 and says out loud that this is a strength challenge with a range of 1 to 10. Ruben’s player guesses a number within the range. If they guess 2, they succeed. They also succeed if the number they guess is within their strength stat distance away from the storyteller’s number. If Ruben’s strength stat is 1, then guessing a 1, a 2, and a three will all succeed, and Ruben’s sword will strike the dragon. If Ruben’s strength stat is 4, then guessing 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 6 will succeed, because a guess of 6 minus the strength stat of 4 equals the storyteller’s number of 2.

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