NightSky

NightSky is a rules system for creating open-ended narrative-driven roleplaying games, focused on encouraging player agency and providing meaningful consequences.

How to play

NightSky is played by a group of people sitting together.

One person is chosen to be the referee, and has the role of adjudicating actions, determining consequences, and bringing a fictional world to life with descriptions and narration. It is their job to give the players interesting choices. Everybody else is a player, each playing as a character in the game, determining how their character interacts with the world, and shaping the overall direction of the game in collaboration with the referee. It is their job to explore and exploit the world that the referee has created.

The objective of the game is up to the players and the referee. The players might want to solve a mystery, plan a heist, or explore a distant island. As the game plays out, the characters will amass knowledge, influence, and wealth, and the players will leave their mark on the game world, setting events into motion with the choices and actions that they make.

Each person will need easy access to a twenty-sided dice throughout the game, and three six-sided dice when creating characters (although just one six-sided dice will do in a pinch).

The core rules

The capabilities of your character are determined by five attributes, called strength, dexterity, vitality, intuition, and presence. The values of your attributes will rise and fall over time in response to the choices you make. If an attribute drops to zero, you will no longer be able to perform actions which rely on that attribute.

• Strength
  Represents physical strength, and is used for actions involving lifting, dragging, hitting, and brute force.
• Dexterity
  Represents agility and precision of movement, and is used for actions involving leaping, climbing, throwing, and hand-eye coordination.
• Vitality
  Represents physical health and resilience, and is used for actions involving endurance, exertion, resistance, and survival. If your vitality becomes zero, your character will die.
• Intuition
  Represents observation and focus, and is used for actions involving perception, deduction, pattern recognition, and situational awareness.
• Presence
  Represents calmness and confidence, and is used for actions involving intimidation, manipulation, morale, and self-control.

To determine values for a new character, go through each of the five attributes in order. For each one, roll three six-sided dice and total their values.

To perform an action where success is not guaranteed, roll a twenty-sided dice, add the value of the attribute which best fits the action, subtract 10, and compare this total to a target difficulty value determined by the referee. If your total exceeds the difficulty value, you successfully perform the action.

The extended rules

The extended rules are grouped into themed sets.

How to run the game

This section contains the framework for the referee. Players are welcome to read this section, but should only feel the need to do so out of idle curiosity.

Actions

When a character attempts to perform an action where there is a meaningful risk of failure, roll a twenty-sided dice, add the value of the attribute most applicable to the action, apply any other modifiers, subtract 10, and compare this total to a target difficulty value.

If the result exceeds the target value, the action succeeds. If the result exceeds the target value plus 5, the action has a greater effect, if relevant. If the result equals the target value, or less, the action fails. If the result equals the target value minus 5, or less, the consequences of failure are more detrimental, if relevant.

Favourable conditions each reduce the target by two. Unfavourable conditions each increase the target by two.

The following table provides some example difficulty values: