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Colonial Deed... (c) 2011, Joe Sweeney

Author... Joe Sweeney

Quality Control

... Ray Duell

Infographics... Kascha Sweeney... Mark Person

Test Subjects...Joshua (Trekkie) Edwards... Ray (Maxtac) Duell... Paul (El Magnifico) Worden... Michael (The Mad Heng) Porteous

ClearanceTo my loving wife, Nila: may we have many more great adventures together.

From the author

Thanks for picking up Rapture Essentials. We’ve spent many, many months working on Rapture, tweaking, play-testing, and editing text. This book, along with the Rapture Core Rulebook, are very much a labor of love. As a tiny indie publisher, we rely heavily on the work of friends and people that share our vision of funky, character-driven role-playing games. We hope you get as much a kick out of playing Rapture as we had making it!

Publishing a quality game is neither easy nor free. We do have bills to pay: from the (high) cost of design software to licensing fonts and artwork. And if we are to keep publishing games, then we need to at least break even.

It is for this reason that I urge any of you that have downloaded this book from a pirate site to stop and give us a thought. Even if you just want to run a single session, with a bunch of friends buying Rapture is still cheaper than a single movie ticket (and much better value!) Plus once you buy it, you’ll get free upgrades and the occasional bonus file from us. If nothing else, think it as a donation to a bunch of crazy folks who are producing weird stuff for your enjoyment.

SEE THE RAPTURE AT WWW.RPGNOW.COM

the end of daysRaptureEssentials: The Players Handbook

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WELCOME TO THE END OF DAYS ...............3Mechanical Concepts 3

CHARACTER CREATION ..............................4Go Forth and Multiply 4

THE EBB AND FLOW OF PLAY.....................7Challenges 8

Unopposed Challenges 9Opposed Challenges 10Adjusting Dice Pools 11

How to Build Your Dice Pool 14How to Resolve a Conflict 15

FEAR .........................................................16Gaining Fear 16Effects of Fear 16Overcoming Fear 16Recovering from Fear 16

DAMAGE ..................................................17Splash Damage 17Incapacitation 19

Corpus reduced to zero 19Mens reduced to zero 19Potentia reduced to zero 19Recovery 20Optional Rule: Blessed are meek 20

A CAST OF THOUSANDS...........................21Adding to Dice Pools 21Too Many Dice! 21Extras with Guns 21

EXPERIENCE .............................................22The Sweet Release of Death 22

MADNESS .................................................23

OVERVIEW OF THE COLONIAL POWERS..25Sino Block 25North American Alliance 25Democratic Russian Union 26Indomerican Collective 26Free Island States of Pacifica 26United Colonial Marines (UCM) 27

FACTIONS .................................................28Xeno Rationalism 28Militant Atheism 28Paganism 28Religious Liberalism 28Biblical Inerrancy 28Biblical Fundamentalism 29Humanist Emancipationism 29Theistic Satanism (Primordial) 29Theistic Satanism (Reverent) 29Atheistic Satanism 29

TECHNOLOGY ...........................................30Guns 30Melee Weapons 30Non-Lethal Weapons 31Armor 31Targeting Systems 31Professional Tools 31

TIPS FOR PLAYERS ....................................32Paranoid, Yes. Psychotic, No 32Improvisation 32Death Becomes You 33Extras are People Too! 33

INDEX .......................................................34

Contents

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Welcome to the Rapture. The year is 2645 and humanity has reached the stars. The one true God, however, has kept His promise and the End of Days has come. Earth is gone, and those of pure soul have ascended. Those who no longer followed the Word of The Lord have been cast aside, taken unto the breast of the Great Beast. But that was only on Earth. Scat-tered through the vastness of space, the last of humanity clings to fledgling colonies. And the forces of Legion are coming for them...

This mini-rulebook book contains the basic rules for playing Mortals - the brave men and women who were unlucky enough to be in space when the Rapture came. This book is designed as a quick reference for new players or Game Masters (GMs) that want to print out the core rules for use at the gaming table. The Rapture: End of Days Core Rulebook contains more details and examples of how these rules

can be used during the game, and it is strongly recommended that at the very least the Game Master has a copy of that book. Even so, this handy mini-rulebook will give you all the basics needed to play in the Rapture universe.

Mechanical Concepts

Rapture: The End Of Days, is first and foremost a role-playing game of temptation, politics, horror and sacrifice. Rapture leans strongly towards the narrative style of role-playing games: that is, it focuses on story, characters and plot over game mechanics.

The game’s rules reflect these two facts. Gamers who play up their mortal hero’s flaws and sacri-fice them in honest, true and dramatic ways in the quest for redemption, are rewarded. Unlike most role-playing games, combat (or any other situation) is not resolved using a blow-by-blow mechanism. Instead, a holistic dice roll is used to resolve big chunks combat, often involving multiple participants. This is partly because many of the battles involve dozens, if not legions, of characters, but also because we wanted to keep Rapture focused on characters and plot.

How you narrate the results of such battles is what makes this approach work.

Your heroes will not know what has befallen Earth, and even if they do, they will disagree with it’s meaning. Factional in-fighting is rife, and once purely theological ideas are becom-ing a matter of life and death.

Welcome to the End of Days

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Go Forth and Multiply

To create a character, grab of a copy of the Rapture Mortal Character Sheet (a low-ink version is included with this product) and follow these ten easy steps:

1. Decide on the gender, age and name of your character. These will not impact the game mechanics in any way, but they may impact the story.

2. Choose a Profession for your character. Any Profession is fine. Be creative - there may be entirely new jobs in the far future. Just re-member that this Profession will help your hero successfully perform any task that would be associated with that Profession.

3. Select your character’s Attributes. You have 8 points to spend between your Mens (Mind), Corpus (Body) and Potentia (Soul). Each Attribute must have at least 1 point and no more than 5. The higher the num-ber, the easier it is for your character to do things associated with that Attribute. A value of 2 is considered normal for most people. 5 is considered world-class.

4. Add Experience, if any. If this character is replacing one that died a glorious death (as voted by the gaming group), you get an extra point to spend on Attributes. This bo-nus is cumulative. So if two of your previous characters (in this story) died in an appro-priate way then you will have 2 extra points to spend.

5. Select three Heroic Skills for your charac-ter. Your character excels at these skills. Choose wisely. During the game, these skills will give you bonuses that may determine whether your hero lives or dies!

6. Write down a Personal Goal for your char-acter. This is a burning desire they have and must be phrased as a potential source of temptation. It must also be very specific. Good examples include: “Gain a promotion to Scout Command Captain,” “Make James fall in love with me,” or “Get ten million dol-lars.” Your character’s Personal Goal can give a big one-off bonus during the game, but it can also open your character’s soul to temptation and corruption, so choose wisely...

7. Write down a Redemption Task. This is a task that your character needs to perform in order to redeem some secret sin or hid-den shame from his or her past. It should be relatively specific. Examples: “Protect the children at any cost”, “Return the Cru-cifix of Eccaslicoma to Earth.” Remember, this task is essential for them to clear their conscience and restore the blemish on their soul, and can provide a significant one-time bonus during the game session.

8. Select a Faction and Factional Goal. The Rapture is a time of confusion and uncer-tainty. Humanity has a knack for filling in the unknown with religion and belief, and these quickly form into factional and ideo-logical conflicts. Your Factional Goal can be a general task associated with your hero’s

Character creation

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factional belief. The available Factions are: Xeno Rationalism, Militant Atheism, Pagan-ism, Religious Liberalism, Biblical Inerrancy, Biblical Fundamentalism, Humanist Eman-cipationism, Theistic Satanism (Primordial), Theistic Satanism (Reverent) and Atheistic Satanism. See “Factions” on page 28 of this book for a summary, or see the Rapture Core Rulebook, “Factions” on pages 70-76 for full details.

9. Choose a Political Alliance. Your character will be aligned to one of the big five geo-political powers, one of the smaller colonial groups or even one of the colonial corpo-rations. In some game sessions, your Game Master may dictate your character’s Politi-cal Alliance. The available colonial powers include: Sino Block, North American Alli-ance, Southern Union, Democratic Russian Union, Indomerican Collective, Freepers,

United Colonial Marines or any of the many colonial corporations. See “Overview of the Colonial Powers” on page 25 for a summary, or see the Rapture Core Rulebook, “Beast of Nations” on pages 49-60, and “Colonial Corporations” on pages 60-65 for full de-tails.

10. Finally, the Game Master will give you a se-cret Political Instruction. This is a task that the character’s superiors want her or him to achieve. It also gives a big one-off bonus during the game session.

That’s it; you’re ready to go. There is no need to create a deep character history at this stage. As you play Rapture, you will create and narrate your character’s history on the fly, and weave it into the story.

See page 6 in the Rapture Core Rulebook.

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RaputreRapTurePlayerNameProfession

Mens

Corpus

Potentia

abcdeabcdeabcde

Add 1 dice to the dice pool when using profession

Allocate 8 points to above (plus 1 point for each previous glorious death). Used as basis for dice pools. Also used to track damage.

Fear abcdeAdd fear dice to the dice pool for any fight or flight actions. Deduct fear dice from the dice pool for all other actions.

Personal Goal

Use once per session to add additional attribute dice to the dice pool

Redemption Task

Political Alliance

FactionFactional Goal

Heroic SkillsGrease Monkeymechanics, engineeringHackercomputing, securityBrainiacscience, analysis, R&D

Quackmedical

Gunslingershooting

Bruiserfighting

Flyboypiloting

Wheelmandriving

Gumshoeresearch, investigation

Politiciandiplomacy, bluff

God Botherertheology, religion, prayer

The Bossleadership, bureaucracy, law

Select three skills.+1 dice whenever using the skill and +3 dice per skill once per game session.

Use once per session to add additional attribute dice to the dice pool

Use once per session to add additional attribute dice to the dice pool

Use once per session to add additional attribute dice to the dice pool

Madness & CursesPolitical Instruction

Inventory & Notes

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Like all role-playing games, Rapture has a Game Master (GM), who builds the initial plots and world setting, and a group of players who take control of characters. Together they jointly weave a story, flesh out plot complications and resolve outcomes of actions. A set of rules – we call them Commandments – provide structure for describing the characters and determining the outcomes of actions during the game.

Rapture is a ‘rules light’ game. The focus is very much on creating moody, dark, cinematic horror. We’d rather cause your skin to crawl than give you pages of weapon descriptions.

The general rule of thumb is, if something sounds reasonable to do or pushes the story in an interesting direction, you really shouldn’t need to roll dice. Just get on with building tension and, by the grace of God, your charac-ters may see out another day.

A game of Rapture takes place as a series of Scenes. Much like the scenes of a movie, or the chapters of a book, Scenes in Rapture take place within a specific location and involve a specific problem or situation that must be resolved.

When creating an adventure, the Game Master will begin each Scene with a narrative, briefly describing the physical environment, telling you who is in the Scene (which players’ heroes and which non-player characters are present) and outlining who is doing what as the Scene opens. Often this narration sets up the story and provides potential Challenges that must be resolved.

It should be noted that the Game Master does not - and should not - describe every detail of

the Scene. The little details are best added by the players as their heroes engage in the Scene. For example, if a Scene takes place in a hospital ward, there is no need for the Game Master to describe every single medical instrument to the players. This means that later in the Scene, a player can state that his or her hero is grabbing a hypodermic gun filled with a powerful neural tranquilizer, or perhaps ripping the fire extin-guisher from the wall for use as a weapon! For the Game Master, the art is to create an intro-duction to the Scene that is evocative, but that still gives the players plenty of scope to add to the scene as the action heats up.

Once the introduction is complete, players may describe their hero’s actions. When charac-ters attempt to do something that is normal - like walking across the road or even piloting a shuttle down to an airfield on a peaceful colony - no dice roll is needed. We can assume that the heroes are at least competent enough to get through the day without random accidents (unless the Game Master wants an accident in the Scene, in which case, it’s going to happen no matter what!).

During each Scene at least one situation will arise that could be a turning point in the story.

These situations are called Challenges, and they are resolved by rolling a number of dice. The exact number of dice rolled depends upon the characters’ actions, the nature of the situation, and how many characters and Extras (see page 21) are helping. The more dice that the players roll, the more likely it is their heroes will be successful. Likewise, the more dice the Game Master rolls for the opposition, the more likely it is the players’ heroes will fail. In many cases,

The Ebb and Flow of Play

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