Episode Details

How to play Ikrala

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 Ikrala. 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 Ikrala game at home.

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

1. Game category

2. Abilities: STR, DEX, CTRL

3. Combat rules

4. Zero hit points

5. Building a character

Game category. Ikrala is a fantasy survival horror procedural dungeon crawl through a massive artificial constructed place, resembling something like a mall, a casino, an airport, or a furniture store. On the one hand, there is a horror to a place with no natural light where every square foot has been planned to slow you down, lure you into forgetting what time it is, and not realize you are spending forever there. On the other hand, there is a fantasy aspect to being in the store overnight, jumping onto the display bed, picking up any container off the shelf and eating out of it. Ikrala melds the horror and fantasy together into a massive nearly endless store where everything is yours for the taking, but everything is also out to kill you. Like the movie Beauty and the Beast where the furniture and cutlery has a mind of its own, or like a mimic treasure chest that eats the adventurers who open it, players will fight floor after floor in their quest to find the item they’re shopping for, and then find the elusive parking garage exit.

How to play. Players roll a 20 sided dice, also called a d20, and compare the result to their ability score. If the dice is equal to or lower than their ability, they succeed. For example, a dice roll of 10 and an ability of 11 would mean the player succeeded on what they were trying to do. If the dice is higher than the ability, they failed. For example a dice roll of 20, which is often a critical success in other tabletop role playing games, is always a failure in Ikrala. In Ikrala, a 1 is always a success.

Here is an example of a strength ability roll. Vera is trying to lift a dresser to block the door she and her party just came through. The dresser is heavy, and will be a good barricade for the door. But, being heavy, it is not trivial to move it. Vera’s strength ability is 11. Vera’s player rolls a d20 and gets a 6. This is a success. Ver