Episode Details

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.

1. Game category

2. Traits, skills, and specializations

3. Rolling dice

4. Spleen and ideal

5. Difficulty and margins

6. Self transcendence

7. How to attack

8. Impacts and dying

9. Armor

10. Effects

11. Surprise

12. Healing

13. Helping allies

14. 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 t