EGADS! - an original TTRPG system

Everyone's Good At Doing Something!

That's the premise for this character-driven TTRPG system, designed to be intuitive to pick up and endlessly adaptable for your adventures and settings. This game and its system guide was entirely designed, written, and illustrated by me over the course of just over three years.

In this new system, you and a group of friends (one of whom will play as the Game Master) will build characters based not just on what they're good at, but also how they're good at it. Its mechanics are built to ask the question "how would your character would do this?", in order to support depth in roleplay and reflect the endless ways different people can achieve their goals.

EGADS! is designed to be easy to pick up even for those unfamiliar with tabletop gaming, and extensive playtesting has yielded positive feedback to this end from players of all levels of experience. It provides the option for more advanced mechanics for experienced players to sink their teeth into if they're looking for more depth in their game. The game book contains advice and guides on how to adapt the system for your own games across a wide variety of genres, with a range of mechanical options for exploration, trials, combat, and powers. It is suitable for players of all ages but a responsible guardian is recommended for those under the age of 8.

"How does it work?"

Excellent question, disembodied voice!

EGADS! is a d6-based, character-driven, setting agnostic tabletop role-playing game. To break it down a bit more, it uses six-sided dice as the primary means of determining the outcomes of actions that the players and the Game Master (or GM) choose during sessions. I chose d6s as the basis for this system as they're the most common type of dice - if you have any dice at home, you most likely have these. In the game, when you need to determine the outcome of an uncertain action, you roll the relevant number of dice (as determined by your character's stats) and choose your outcome from the pool of dice you rolled. Each number corresponds with a particular outcome, as shown here:

• 6 = Inspiring: succeed with bonus and next roll is easier
• 5 = Insightful: succeed with bonus
• 4 = Successful: good job!
  
• 3 = Partial: succeed at cost or fail without cost
• 2 = Failure: fail at cost
  
• 1 = Severe: fail at a higher cost

Character was always at the centre of designing EGADS! When you make your character you'll decide what they do, what they're about, and yes, what they're good at. You choose how to arrange their stats and what skills they're particularly good at, changing how many dice they can roll for actions.

As they progress through their adventures, they will take on effects that will effect their outcomes for better or worse, and potentially even cause shifts in their attributes. This can mean gaining, losing, or undertaking a change in one of the qualities or things that your character has.  When they reach milestones in their adventures, they can acquire new abilities or strengthen ones they already have. All together, the choices and changes you'll face along the way will reflect the character's journey and ask you to think about how it might be reflected in the character's growth.

Lastly, the whole system is designed for you to be able to adapt it for any kind of setting, genre, or adventure you want to play. With simple base rules and suggestions for structuring more intricate or specific rule sets, the system guide has all the information you need to get started. It also contains suggestions and advice for how you might like to modify the rules to better suit the game you're playing the group you're with.

EGADS! is here for all your TTRPG needs!