RAW is a tabletop role-playing game designed with simplicity at its core. It simplifies traditional TTRPG mechanics by using a broad-strokes approach to abilities. Unlike games with extensive lists of skills, RAW condenses them into a few versatile abilities. This design lets players act decisively without getting bogged down in rules. For instance, a character skilled in melee can excel in both sword fighting and unarmed combat using the same ability score. This streamlined system keeps the focus on action and narrative progression.
This simplicity promotes a story-driven experience, where the game master uses common sense and creativity to lead the game.
RAW makes it easier to start playing TTRPGs. Unlike games like 5e with many rules and manuals, RAW is simple. It has fewer rules, so new players can quickly become game masters (GMs). There's no need to know every rule or worry about players min-maxing their characters. RAW focuses on fun and storytelling, using the Rule of Cool (RoC) to keep the game exciting and accessible for everyone.
The system works for any setting, from fantasy to futuristic. Abilities adapt to the context; for example, "technology" might mean different things in different worlds. RAW is all about keeping things broad and flexible to enhance the story, rather than getting caught up in complex rules.
In this chapter, we'll dive into creating a character for RAW, a process that sets the stage for your adventures. Unlike other TTRPGs, RAW doesn’t confine characters to specific archetypes or classes. Instead, the abilities you choose carve out your character's identity and capabilities. By selecting abilities that resonate with your vision, you shape who your character is and how they interact with the world.
A character's experience and proficiency in various fields are represented by the percentage scale of abilities, which is the core factor in determining success. This approach emphasises that a character's ability value play a more significant role than luck in their actions. While dice rolls add an element of chance, they range only from 1 to 20, making the ability percentage the dominant factor. This system underscores that a character's success is largely due to their expertise and training, rather than random luck, highlighting the importance of strategic ability allocation.
Let's start this journey of crafting a unique character tailored to your story in the world of RAW.
Character creation begins with the allocation of ability points, forming the foundation of your character’s strengths and weaknesses.
Each player is granted 120 points to distribute among the following abilities:
| Ability | Short Description |
|---|---|
| Athletics | Physical prowess in actions like running, jumping |
| Art and Craft | Creativity and skill in making and designing |
| Drive/Pilot | Proficiency in controlling vehicles and crafts |
| Education | Knowledge and learning ability |
| Empathy/Psychology | Understanding and influencing emotions |
| Intimidate/Persuade | Coercion and convincing others |
| Investigation | Skill in analysing information |
| Medicine | Knowledge and practice of healing |
| Melee Combat | Proficiency in close-quarters combat |
| Occult/Magic | Understanding of mystical forces and occult elements |
| Perception | Ability to notice subtle details and changes |
| Ranged Combat | Skill in using ranged weapons |
| Stealth/Survival | Proficiency in avoiding detection and enduring |
| Technology | Expertise in modern and advanced tools or repair |
| Willpower | Mental fortitude and discipline |
Choosing how to distribute these points is crucial. A broad approach makes a character adaptable, while a focused one creates a specialist. This decision sets the stage for your character’s role and how they will navigate the challenges of a campaign.
In RAW, abilities also have a passive aspect. For every 20 points in an ability, you get 1 passive point. This shows automatic skills, like defence or mental resistance. For example, if you're good in melee, you're also better at avoiding harm. If you have strong willpower, it's harder for others to read your mind. Knowing your passive points helps you understand what your character can do naturally, without trying.
Understanding these passive abilities is crucial for players, as they define how characters inherently react and protect themselves in the game world, even without active efforts from the player.
| Ability Value | Passive Ability |
|---|---|
| 0-19 | 0 |
| 20-39 | 1 |
| 40-59 | 2 |
| 60-79 | 3 |
| 80-99 | 4 |
| 100+ | 5 |
Your character's life points is the sum of your passive willpower, passive athletics values and 20. This total shows how tough and resilient your character is.
Playing RPGs is about more than just numbers. While RAW focuses on mechanics, it also values the creation of well-rounded characters. A character comes alive through their backstory, shaped by the player’s understanding of their motives and origins.
To develop a rich and believable character in RAW, following these steps provides a solid starting point. Each phase of the narrative construction adds layers to your character, offering depth and relatability. Let's explore these steps to effectively define your character:
- Backstory: Initiating with the backstory sets the foundation, giving insight into the character's origins and how past events have shaped their personality and abilities.
- Notable Characters in Your Past: Recognising key individuals in your character’s life helps to flesh out their social and emotional landscape, showing how relationships have influenced their development.
- Want: This is the character's conscious desire or goal. It's what they believe will bring them happiness, fulfilment, or success. In a story, the "want" is often the driving force that propels the character into action and shapes their journey. It's the external objective they're striving to achieve, like winning a competition, finding a lost treasure, or achieving fame.
- Need: Unlike "want," the "need" is something the character may not be aware of but is essential for their growth or transformation. It represents an internal fulfilment that truly satisfies their deeper, often unacknowledged, desires. The "need" is what the character requires to resolve inner conflicts and achieve real happiness or peace. It's about personal growth, understanding, and emotional or moral enlightenment.
- Where Were You 5 Years Ago and What Happened: This snapshot in time reveals a crucial chapter in your character’s life, highlighting transformative experiences that have led to their current situation.
- Who Have You Wronged: Reflecting on past conflicts or transgressions adds complexity to your character, offering opportunities for growth and redemption.
Incorporating this information into your character's backstory is crucial for the Game Master to craft a more personalised story. It's important to be concise; your backstory should not be an exhaustive book but rather a summary of key information. The GM will likely be juggling multiple backstories, so presenting yours in a clear and accessible format will greatly assist them. A well-organised and straightforward backstory allows the GM to easily integrate your character's narrative into the game, enhancing the overall experience for everyone involved. Consider using bullet points: they are easy to read and remember.
In RAW, abilities are the foundation of your character's skills and determine their effectiveness in various situations. Each ability represents a broad range of related actions and competencies. Below is a detailed explanation of each ability and how it can be applied in different settings like fantasy, cyberpunk, or space opera.
- Athletics: This covers your character's physical activities such as running, jumping, and climbing. In a fantasy setting, it might mean scaling a castle wall, while in a cyberpunk world, it could involve sprinting through neon-lit streets to evade security drones.
- Art and Craft: Reflects creativity and the ability to make or design things. Whether painting a masterpiece in a medieval world or creating a holographic sculpture in a futuristic society, this ability is key.
- Drive/Pilot: Indicates proficiency with vehicles, whether it's driving a horse-drawn carriage, piloting a starship through an asteroid field, or manoeuvring a hover-bike in a high-tech city.
- Education: Represents knowledge and academic learning. This ability could be used to decipher ancient texts in a fantasy library or to understand complex quantum algorithms in a cyberpunk reality.
- Empathy/Psychology: Involves understanding and influencing emotions and behaviour. It's as useful in negotiating with a tribal leader in a fantasy game as it is in profiling a cybercriminal in a futuristic setting.
- Intimidate/Persuade: Encompasses both coercion and convincing others. This might mean threatening a city guard to gain information or persuading a corporation executive to fund an expedition in space.
- Investigation: The skill in gathering and analysing information, crucial for solving mysteries in a gothic horror campaign or uncovering corporate espionage in a cyberpunk thriller.
- Medicine: Knowledge of healing, applicable in treating plague victims in a medieval world or performing cybernetic surgery in a sci-fi universe.
- Melee Combat: Shows proficiency in close-quarters combat, whether swinging a sword in a fantasy battle or engaging in a cyber-enhanced fistfight in a dystopian metropolis.
- Occult/Magic: Understanding mystical forces, relevant in casting spells in a fantasy realm or manipulating arcane energies in an alternative reality.
- Perception: The ability to notice subtle details, important for spotting an ambush in a dark fantasy forest or detecting a hidden surveillance device in a futuristic office.
- Ranged Combat: Skill in using ranged weapons, from firing a longbow in a medieval siege to operating a plasma rifle during a space station assault.
- Stealth/Survival: Proficiency in avoiding detection and enduring harsh conditions, essential for moving unseen through enemy territory or surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
- Technology: Expertise in modern and futuristic tools and technology, from repairing a steam engine in a steampunk city to hacking a security network in a cyberpunk world.
- Willpower: Represents mental strength and discipline, crucial for resisting magical enchantment in a fantasy setting or withstanding psychological manipulation in a corporate warfare scenario.
Understanding and choosing the right abilities for your character will greatly influence their role in the game and how they interact with the world around them. Each setting offers unique challenges and opportunities for these abilities to shine.
Life points track the physical and mental wellbeing of your character. If they drop to 0, your character dies. Falling below 10 life points means your character is seriously hurt. Challenges become harder (adding a 20-point penalty to all your rolls) and recovering needs special attention as it reflects the struggle of pushing through a major pain and injury.
Characters in RAW naturally recover one life point per day, reflecting the body's innate ability to heal over time. However, if life points have dropped below 10, indicating severe injury or trauma, natural recovery can only restore a character's life points up to a maximum of 9. This rule ensures that serious injuries require more than just time to heal, emphasising the need for medical intervention or significant rest to fully recover.
For faster or more complete recovery, especially after life points have fallen below 10, medical treatment becomes essential. Characters with the Medicine ability can perform medical treatments to aid recovery, with each successful medicine check restoring an amount of life points equal to the number of successes achieved. These checks can be attempted each hour, allowing for the possibility of rapid recuperation with effective medical care.
Characters naturally recover 1 life points per day; however, if a character's life has fallen below 10, the maximum amount of life will equal to 9. This indicates a state of physical or mental pain that requires x
In RAW, game mechanics are centred around abilities, dictating both the potential actions of characters and their success levels. Action resolution involves comparing the total from an ability score and a d20 roll against a set number of required successes, which form the threshold for the action.
- Thresholds represent the number of successes needed to perform an action successfully. These are predefined by the Game Master based on the action's difficulty.
- Number of Successes: The total of an ability score plus a dice roll determines the number of successes a character achieves. Every 20 points equal one success, so the total is divided by 20 to determine the total successes.
- Failure: Any result less than 20 is considered a failure.
For instance, if a character has an ability score of 40 and rolls a 15, their total is 55. Divided by 20, this total gives 2 successes. If the action's threshold was 2 successes, the character would meet the required threshold to succeed in the action.
| Total Value (Ability + Roll) | Threshold Type | Number of Successes |
|---|---|---|
| 0-19 | Failure | 0 |
| 20-39 | Simple | 1 |
| 40-59 | Moderate | 2 |
| 60-79 | Difficult | 3 |
| 80-99 | Challenging | 4 |
| 100-119 | Extreme | 5 |
| 120+ | Near Impossible | 6 |
Actions in RAW are divided into automatic, unopposed, and opposed categories, each with specific resolution methods.
Automatic actions don't require a roll. If a character's ability score alone meets the threshold of successes needed, the action is considered automatically successful. This rule saves dice rolling for more pivotal moments within the game's narrative.
In unopposed actions, such as shooting or driving, the character's total (ability score plus dice roll) is compared against the threshold of successes. The GM sets this threshold based on how difficult the task should be.
For opposed actions, one character’s number of successes is pitted against another’s passive ability or active resistance. The initiator of the action must achieve more successes than the defender to succeed in their action.
Critical rolls occur on natural rolls of 1 or 20. A roll of 1 might signify a critical failure, possibly reducing the number of successes, while a roll of 20 signifies a critical success, which could increase the number of successes achieved.
This revised system streamlines the action resolution process, making it clear that success is quantified by achievable increments of 20 points, which directly translate to the number of successes needed to overcome challenges.
Combat in RAW is straightforward and tactical, focusing on the skill of the combatant rather than relying on random damage rolls. There is no initiative system; player characters act first, followed by non-player characters. The Game Master ensures that each player has the opportunity to act before any player character takes their second turn, maintaining fairness and engagement.
In combat, a player initiates an attack by rolling for either a Melee or Ranged attack. To determine if the attack hits, add the ability score to the dice roll. A hit occurs when this total results in at least one success, meaning the combined score reaches the necessary threshold to overcome the opponent's defences. The number of successes reflects the attacker's proficiency and skill in executing the attack.
Once a hit is confirmed, damage calculation comes into play. Instead of relying on random dice rolls for damage, RAW uses a fixed system where the weapon’s damage rating (1 to 5) is multiplied by the number of successes from the attack roll. This method highlights the importance of skill in combat, allowing a more proficient fighter to inflict greater damage by leveraging their expertise with their weapon.
When defending, a character's passive melee ability (for melee attacks) or passive athletics (for ranged attacks), along with their armour rating, determines how much damage they can negate. The defender subtracts the sum of their passive ability and armour rating from the incoming damage.
Each character is typically allowed one attack per round. However, they can perform counter-attacks when attacked by non-player characters within the same round.
Mechanically a counter-attack works as a normal attack, but it is performed after the opponent completes their attack.
The number of counter-attacks a player character can make is limited by their passive melee score minus one (the first is used for the player character's attack). The first counter-attack incurs a -20 penalty to the attack roll, with each subsequent counter-attack increasing the penalty by an additional -20. This system reflects the growing difficulty of defending against multiple assaults and keeps the combat fair and tactical.
When facing multiple adversaries, a character cannot initiate multiple attacks in their turn but can react with counter-attacks to incoming attacks from different opponents, with the penalties ensuring that these reactions are balanced against the opportunity to strike back.
Alia, our hero, has been cornered by three thugs: Jack, Mick and Shack. She has a melee score of 42. When the fight starts, Alia attacks Jack, hitting him and then being attacked back.
It is then Mick's turn to attack Alia, after which she can counter-attack him.
Last, but not least, she is attacked by Shack. Unfortunately Alia's passive melee is only 2, so she can counte attack only once.
In RAW, weapons are assigned a damage rating that reflects their potential for harm, rather than being categorised. This rating directly influences the damage dealt in combat, with higher-rated weapons inflicting more damage. Here’s an expanded list of common weapons along with their damage ratings:
| Damage Rating | Examples |
|---|---|
| 1 | Kicks, fists, slings, thrown rocks |
| 2 | Dagger, club, staff, light crossbow |
| 3 | Short sword, spear, hand axe, heavy crossbow |
| 4 | Long sword, battle axe, mace, war hammer |
| 5 | Greatsword, halberd, flail, longbow |
This streamlined approach allows for quick assessment of a weapon’s impact in combat, focusing on the potential damage output rather than its category or type.
Armour in RAW provides a static amount of damage reduction, from 1 to 3. Wearing armour makes it more difficult to perform athletic actions, with a penalty to successes equal to the armour's damage reduction.
| Armour Type | Damage Reduction |
|---|---|
| Leather | 1 |
| Chain mail | 2 |
| Plate | 3 |
Armour can become damaged if an attacker rolls a natural 20, reducing its damage reduction by 1 until repaired.
In RAW, character progression is tied directly to the improvement of abilities, reflecting a character's growing expertise and experience. Unlike some RPGs, life points remain constant, emphasising that progression occurs through skill enhancement rather than physical changes.
Characters enhance their abilities over time, becoming more proficient in their chosen skills. After each session, players are awarded 3 bonus points. These points can be used to improve existing abilities or to learn new ones, offering flexibility and encouraging creativity in character development.
Players have two options for levelling up abilities with their bonus points:
Roll for Improvement: This method offers the chance for rapid advancement. Players roll a d100, aiming to score higher than their current ability value. Successes in the roll, calculated as every 20 points, increase the ability accordingly. A natural 100 on the roll doubles the number of successes, potentially leading to significant leaps in ability.
This approach is more unpredictable but can result in substantial gains, especially for lower-scored abilities.
Guaranteed Increment: For characters with higher ability scores, a more reliable method is to exchange one bonus point for a one-point increase in an ability. This method ensures steady growth and is particularly useful for enhancing already strong skills.
Character progression in RAW adheres to the "Rule of Cool," granting players the freedom to shape their characters in exciting ways and ensuring enjoyment for everyone involved. This approach to levelling up fosters a game environment where character growth is both meaningful and rewarding.
Hero Points epitomise the essence of heroism in RAW, providing characters with the potential to dramatically alter the outcome of actions and conflicts. Each character has a Hero Points pool, with a maximum capacity of 100 points. These points can be strategically used to boost roll outcomes, turning near-misses into triumphant successes.
Imagine your character is deciphering a complex code, and you roll a total of 57, achieving two successes. By using 3 Hero Points, you could elevate this to three successes, simplifying the task at hand. Or consider a critical combat scenario where your attack roll is just shy of the dragon's defence. Applying Hero Points can bridge this gap, enabling a decisive victory.
At the start of each session, players have the opportunity to replenish their Hero Points. This is done by rolling a d100, with each success adding to their Hero Points pool, mirroring the method used for increasing abilities.
Inspiration acts as a secondary means to refill Hero Points. Players earn inspiration tokens through exceptional gameplay, such as impactful role-playing or heroic deeds. While anyone can suggest someone for an inspiration reward, only the Game Master has the authority to grant it. Each inspiration token increases the Hero Points pool by 3.
Players may choose to donate their Hero Points to a fellow player, enhancing the collective success of the group. The Game Master should facilitate this exchange by exploring the narrative or strategic reason behind the donation, thereby fostering a sense of unity and shared purpose within the party.
Hero Points are a dynamic tool in RAW, offering players increased control over the narrative flow and the ability to succeed in pivotal moments, thereby enriching the gaming experience.