Sellsword

A tabletop RPG combining inspirations from Nimble, Daggerheart, and many more. Short and old school, but with modern creative storytelling flexibility. Enough crunch to dig in, but without a dense tome of complex rules to slow you down. For fans of heroic high fantasy and adventure.

Features include:

FOUR PILLARS OF PLAY

-Combat, Exploration, Social, Lore, each showcasing one of the four Attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, Intelligence

EIGHT CLASSIC CLASSES

-Pairs that shine in the different pillars: Warrior and Berserker, Ranger and Druid, Rogue and Cleric, Wizard and Sorcerer

STRAIGHTFORWARD BASIC MECHANICS

-d20 roll over a Difficulty, simple Advantage/Disadvantage

-Damage Thresholds that keep the injury math and encounter balancing easy (no subtraction! no one-shots!)

-Exploding damage dice that preserve big rolls (dice gremlins rejoice)

-Simple Load-based inventory with Usage Dice for common resources

-Meta-currency for cool moves on demand, Stress for pushing luck or assigning consequence

-A roll table for increasing stats: mechanical boosts at every Level stay balanced, while players get control over selecting cool new moves and Abilities

FOE BUILDER

-No need to sift through a monster manual for foes--instead, use a tool to quickly and easily spin up adversaries on the fly (or ahead of time, if you prefer)

-Consistent, easy to understand, less DM mental load (everything is basically a reskinned bear, after all)

HEAVILY PLAYTESTED

-The game has survived the crucibles of focused adults trying to break it and unpredictable teenagers full of surprises, over 50 full sessions and counting

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Character Sheets are available for free as a demo.

COMING SOON

-Physical copies printed on demand through Lulu

-The Tome of STUFF, a collection of items, weapons, armor, magic scrolls, and more, including Malmidian's Monstrous Menagerie, a host of foes with new moves!

-Spellsword, an expansion featuring even more STUFF, like a Dark Souls and Destiny inspired campaign frame about playing as the deathless dead, and SUBCLASSES:

Spellblade, Monk, Beast-Slayer, Necromancer, Bard, Paladin, Artificer, Warlock

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About this project, and me: I think I mostly wrote this for myself. Mechanics I like, or that function in a way my brain finds particularly pleasing. Layout that works for my eye. Stuff that meets the needs of my players. Writing that tries not to coddle or overstay its welcome, info-dense per page, clean, utilitarian.

But rather than a hodgepodge of house rules, I thought it would be fun to formalize it from scratch, and then testers, friends, players, and gamers in my community liked it enough that I figured somebody else out there might find it appealing too.

As for me, I am a genderqueer author and freelance GM from Kansas. I used to be a teacher, and I bring the love (and skill) of teaching to how I play and run games. I volunteer at my local library to run the Teen D&D program, which proudly provides a safe and fun place for some of the sharpest, funniest, cleverest kids I've ever worked with to get into my favorite hobby.