Torches in the Dark

The Game

Torches in the Dark is a game about a group of daring characters delving into gigantic dungeons. We play to find out if the adventrues will find riches or death.

The Players

Players try to navigate the dungeon.

The Characters

The characters are outcasts who seek riches.

The Game Master

The GM portrays the amazing world according to his prep and translates it for the players so they can navigate it.

The Core System

Judgment calls

In difference to BitD, they are on GM.

Rolling the Dice

The game uses six-sided dice. You roll several at once and read the single highest result.

If you ever need to roll but you have zero (or negative) dice, roll two dice and take the single lowest result. You can’t roll a critical when you have zero dice.

To create a dice pool for a roll, you’ll use a trait and take dice equal to its rating. You’ll usually end up with one to four dice.

There are four types of rolls that you’ll use most often in the game:

The Game Structure

Torches in the Dark has, in difference to BitD, only two parts. One is the delve—characters are exploring the dungeon, and they risk their lives. We follow their every step. Second is the downtime phase, where characters are in relative safety of human settlement, albeit on a ticking clock of mounting expenses. We follow interesting moments or resolve whole days of their downtime activities. 

Actions

Action Ratings

There are 9 actions in the game that the player characters use to overcome obstacles.

Each action has a rating (from zero to 4) that tells you how many dice to roll when you perform that action. You choose which action to perform to overcome an obstacle, by describing what your character does. Actions that are poorly suited to the situation may be less effective and may put the character in more danger, but they can still be attempted. Usually, when you perform an action, you’ll make an action roll to see how it turns out.

Action Roll

You make an action roll when your character does something potentially dangerous or troublesome. The possible results of the action roll depend on your character’s position. There are three positions: controlled, risky, and desperate. If you’re in a controlled position, the possible consequences are less serious. If you’re in a desperate position, the consequences can be severe. If you’re somewhere in between, it’s risky—usually considered the “default” position for most actions.

If there’s no danger or trouble at hand, you don’t make an action roll. You might make a fortune roll or a downtime roll or the GM will simply say yes—and you accomplish your goal.

You can get an additional die by pushing yourself for 2 stress.

Teamwork

When it makes sense that more people working together achieve the goal easier—for example in searching a room, or in combat—PCs pool up their action ratings. Depending on fiction, it is possible to pool different action ratings used for same objective.

Double-duty Rolls

Since NPCs don’t roll for their actions, an action roll does double-duty: it resolves the action of the PC as well as any NPCs that are involved. The single roll tells us how those actions interact and which consequences result. On a 6, the PC wins and has their effect. On a 4/5, it’s a mix—both the PC and the NPC have their effect. On a 1-3, the NPC wins and has their effect as a consequence on the PC.

Combat

Combat is is resolved as an action (quite possibly a teamwork one) against tracker equal to sum of opposing combatants' hit dice. Ticking the combat clock means defeating combatants—removing their hit dice. After each roll, both sides have by default an option to flee. (There can be subsequent chase, but there is no roll to "disengagement", if not previously established as a special circumstance.)

Stress

Player characters in Torches in the Dark have a special reserve called stress. When they suffer a consequence that they don’t want to accept, they can take stress instead. The result of the save roll determines how much stress it costs to avoid a bad outcome: the formula is 6 - roll result.

Pushing Yourself

You can use stress to push yourself for greater performance. For each bonus you choose below, take 2 stress (each can be chosen once for a given action):

Effect

In Torchesin the Dark, you achieve goals by taking actions and facing consequences. But how many actions does it take to achieve a particular goal? That depends on the effect level of your actions. The GM judges the effect level using the profiles below. Which one best matches the action at hand­­—great, standard, or limited? Each effect level indicates the questions that should be answered for that effect, as well as how many segments to tick if you’re using a progress tracker.

Trading Position for Effect

After factors are considered and the GM has announced the effect level, a player might want to trade position for effect, or vice versa. For instance, if they’re going to make a risky roll with standard effect (the most common scenario, generally), they might instead want to push their luck and make a desperate roll but with great effect.

Setting Position & Effect

  Limited Standard Great
Controlled      
Risky      
Desperate      

Consequences and Harm

Enemy actions, bad circumstances, or the outcome of a roll can inflict consequences on a PC. A given circumstance might result in one or more consequences, depending on the situation. There are five types:

Reduced Effect

The PC’s action isn’t as effective as they’d anticipated.

Complication

The GM might introduce an immediate problem that results from the action right now: the room catches fire, you’re disarmed, ceiling starts to crumble. Or the GM might tick a clock for the complication, instead: one tick on a clock for a minor complication or two ticks for a standard complication.

A serious complication is more severe: reinforcements surround and trap you, the room catches fire and falling ceiling beams block the door, your weapon is broken, etc. Fill three ticks on a clock for a serious complication.

Lost Opportunity

This consequence represents shifting circumstance. You had an opportunity to achieve your goal with this action, but it slips away. To try again, you need a new approach—usually a new form of action or a change in circumstances.

Worse Position

The action carries you into a more dangerous position. You haven’t failed, but you haven’t succeeded yet, either. You can try again, re-rolling at the new, worse position. A situation might go from controlled, to risky, to desperate as the action plays out and the PC gets deeper and deeper in trouble.

Harm

This consequence represents a long-lasting debility (or death). When you suffer harm, record the specific injury on your character sheet equal to the level of harm you suffer. If you suffer lesser harm, record it in the bottom row. If you suffer moderate harm, write it in the middle row. If you suffer severe harm, record it in the top row. See examples of harm and the harm tracker, below.

Your character suffers the penalty indicated at the end of the row if any or all harm recorded in that row applies to the situation at hand. So, if you have “Sprained ankle” harm in the bottom row, you’ll suffer reduced effect when you try to run away from the skeletons. When you’re impaired by harm in the top row (severe harm, level 3), your character is incapacitated and can’t do anything unless you have help from someone else or push yourself to perform the action.

If you need to mark a harm level, but the row is already filled, the harm moves up to the next row above. So, if you suffered standard harm (level 2) but had no empty spaces in the second row, you’d have to record severe harm (level 3), instead. If you run out of spaces on the top row and need to mark harm there, your character suffers a catastrophic, permanent consequence (loss of a limb, sudden death, etc., depending on the circumstances).

Harm examples

Fatal (4): Stabbed in the Heart
Severe (3): Broken leg
Moderate (2): Deep cut to arm
Lesser (1): Battered

Protect

If it makes sense in fiction, you can step in to face a consequence that one of your teammates would otherwise face. You suffer it instead of them. You may roll to resist it as normal. Describe how you intervene.

Save and Armor

When your PC suffers a consequence that you don’t like, you can choose to resist it. The GM will tell you if the consequence is reduced in severity or if you avoid it entirely. Then, you’ll make a save roll to see how much stress your character suffers instead.

You make the save roll using one of your character’s saves (Insight, Prowess, or Resolve).

Your character suffers 6 stress when they resist, minus the highest die result from the resistance roll. If you get a critical result, you also clear 1 stress.

Usually, a save roll reduces the severity of a consequence. If you’re going to suffer fatal harm, for example, a resistance roll would reduce the harm to severe, instead. Or if you got a complication when you were sneaking into the dragon's lair, and the GM was going to mark three ticks on the “Alert” tracker, she’d only mark two (or maybe one) if you resisted the complication.

You may only roll against a given consequence once.

The GM also has the option to rule that your character completely avoids the consequence. For instance, maybe you’re in a sword fight and the consequence is getting disarmed. When you resist, the GM says that you avoid that consequence completely: you keep hold of your weapon.

Saves (Attribute Ratings)

There are three attributes—sets of action ratings that the player characters use to resist bad consequences: Insight, Prowess, and Resolve. They work in same way as action ratings, but are used for save rolls instead of action rolls.

Prowess

Insight

Resolve
Melee Sneaking Magic
Shooting Larceny Negotiation
Athletics Survey Study

The rating for each attribute is equal to the number of actions from the set in question in which you have rating of at least 1. The more well-rounded your character is with a particular set of actions, the better their attribute rating.

Called Save Roll

When the enemy has a big advantage, you’ll need to make a save roll before you can take your own action. For example, when you duel the master sword-fighter, she disarms you before you can strike. You need to make a resistance roll to keep hold of your blade if you want to attack her.

The GM judges the threat level of the enemies and uses these “preemptive” save rolls as needed to reflect the capabilities of especially dangerous foes.

Armor

Armor let's you save against specific consequence. You tick the armor tracker and can't use it again until you get it replenished.

Fortune Roll

The fortune roll is a tool the GM can use to disclaim decision making. You use a fortune roll in two different ways:

  1. When you need to make a determination about a situation the PCs aren’t directly involved in and don’t want to simply decide the outcome.
  2. When an outcome is uncertain, but no other roll applies to the situation at hand.

If the probability is against PCs, roll with 0d. If it's 50/50, roll with 1d. If the chance is on PCs' side, roll 2d.

Trackers (Clocks)

A tracker is a timer used to track ongoing effort against an obstacle or the approach of impending trouble. A complex obstacle is a 4-segment tracker. A more complicated obstacle is a 6-tracker. A daunting obstacle is an 8-segment tracker. Even more intricate threats can be divided into multiple trackers. The GM can also use a tracker to represent a progressive danger, like the alert level of guards. In this case, when a complication occurs, the GM ticks one, two, or three segments, depending on the consequence level.

Combat

Enemy combatants are an obstacle with the number of segments equal to the sum of their hit dice.

Long-term Project

Some projects will take a long time. A basic long-term project is eight segments. Truly long-term projects can be two, three, or even four consequential trackers. A long-term project is a good catch-all for dealing with any unusual player goal.

Magic

Magic is powerful, but dangerous and difficult.

Casting a spell

You always roll your action rating in magic for casting a spell. If you cast in desperate position, you are risking turning into a newt or conjuring an unbridled demon. In risky position, you are still risking major side effects. Preparing to get better position is possible, but can take more than an hour and requires materials, e.g. candles, chalk and herbs.

Spell rating

You can get better at casting specific spells, denoted by your spell rating. Higher spell rating allows for greater effect on your casting attempts. E.g. with spell of light at spell rating one, your limited effect will mean short flicker while standard effect a dim low light. With spell rating of two, you can cast dim low light as limited effect and for standard, you can get bright light.

You can get better spell rating by spending downtime actions to study and train.

Scrolls

You can, also, prepare a spell in your downtime into a form of a scroll. You can "pre-cast" a spell in ideal conditions, protected by warding circles and with ideal dose of moonlight, thus achieve higher effect without risk, and use it later, when necessity arrives.

For 100 gp (for necessary materials and precautions), you can prepare a spell of great effect without the risk. You can prepare 5 scrolls per week for each dot in your magic rating.

Casting a spell from a scroll, you are not risking newtness (that already happened when you prepared it), only that you won't be able to use it as effectively as expected. E.g. your fireball misses.

Three scrolls normally take up one inventory slot, although you might find unusual and less practical forms. Standard scrolls don't age, but need to be protected from damage, which can lead to uncontrolled magical outbursts.

Learning new spells

PC can learn a new spell from grimoires or teachers, by experimentation, or from scrolls. Grimoires and teachers are the best, but priciest option—you need to find them and spend a downtime action studying. Experimentation means filling out your resolve XP tracker. Learning from scrolls is risky—the scroll is always destroyed, and you need to roll with your magic rating: full success teaches you the spell, partial success only gives you an XP, and failure gives you nothing.

You always start with spell rating of 1, even if learning from a more powerful scroll.

Gold and Equipment

Gold

Gold is given in grain pennies (gp). These are not necessarily the actual currency carried by the characters, but they are the baseline.

250 coins take up one item slot for your load when carried.

Loadout

Your load determines your ease and speed of movement:

Some large or unwieldy items count as more than one load. Small items don't count, or count in bundles.

Stash & Retirement

The goal of your character is to get enough gold to retire from adventure. Each 1000 pennies you put away means one tick on stash tracker. 

Removing coin from your stash

If you want to pull coin out of your stash, you may do so, at a cost. Your character sells off some of their assets and investments in order to get some quick cash. For every stash removed, you get 500 pennies in cash.

Magical items

Magical items are supposed to be the main avenue of advancement of PCs' power, and are more powerful than is standard in old-school gaming. Weapon +1 grants +1 action rating in melee. (That's a much stronger upgrade than +1 bonus to hit on d20! Weapon +3 is makes one almost unstoppable in a fair fight.)

There might be slight problem with insufficient amount of interesting magical items in classic OSR modules—that's one area you might need to regularly tweak, as PCs won't be able to face monsters of higher HDs without powerful enchantments. Prep for letting them get magical items as often as you would expect them to level-up.

Advancement

PC Advancement

There are four ways to get higher action or spell rating:

You get to mark XP by training during downtime.

Getting special abilities is possible only if there's a possibility in fiction, as for example a teacher or a written manual.

Downtime

Between the forays into the dungeon, party takes time to recover, regroup, and prepare for the next operation. This phase of the game is called downtime. Each week of downtime costs an adventurer 100 pennies.

Downtime activities

Between delves, your party spends time at their liberty, attending to personal needs and side projects. These are called downtime activities (see the list below). Each PC has time for two downtime activities per week. Additional activity can be paid for additional 2 ticks of stress.

Activities on the downtime list are limited; normal actions are not. During downtime, you can still go places, do things, make action rolls, gather information, talk with other characters, etc. In other words, only activities that are on the list are limited.

For any downtime activity, take +1d to the roll if someone or something helps you.

Acquire asset

Find and buy an asset, as:

To acquire the asset, you need to pay it's price plus the price of arranging the transaction. This can be paid in service or in gold. You roll Xd where X is each 100 pennies invested into the effort. The result indicates the markup you get on the price. Fail is 100%, partial success 50%, success 10%,  critical success is 10% off.  The GM can also factor in the availability of asset—common items are at their base price, uncommon at double and rare at ten times the original value. You don't have to buy after getting the price.

Recover

When you recover, you seek treatment and heal your harm. You might visit a physicker who can stitch your wounds or a witch who specializes in healing charms and restorative potions. Healing usually costs 100 pennies per tier of healer.

You roll with tier of your healer and you mark a number of segments on your healing tracker. 1-3: one segment, 4/5: two segments, 6: three segments, critical: five segments. When you fill the tracker, reduce each instance of harm on your sheet by one level, then clear the clock. If you have more segments to mark, they “roll over.”

Whenever you suffer new harm, clear any ticks on your healing clock.

Train or study

When you spend time in training, you mark 1 XP on the XP track of your choice.

Unwind

You spend your coin to relieve stress. The fictional description of what you do is up to you, but it needs to be spending money, possibly too much.

You roll Xd where X is each 100 pennies invested. Each six is 1 stress removed. Each one is doubling up the expense. If you can't pay, you will need to face nasty consequences.

Prepare

This means for example preparing scrolls, see chapter on magic.