Playing the game

Boulders & Barbarians is a social game of roleplaying, built on the same ideas and concepts as those of tabletop RPGs from the 80s and onward. One person assumes the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), and his job is to weave a tale of epic fantasy where the players can carve out their own roles as imaginary characters. The goal is not to "win", but to immerse yourself into an intricate and expansive fantasy world. To be successful in your adventures, you will need to cooperate with your fellow players, find creative solutions to difficult problems, and manage your resources well.

Actions
Almost everything your character does is referred to as an "action". Outside of combat, action types and the order in which they happen rarely matter. In combat however, as well as in certain scenarios, actions are split into three categories, namely Standard Actions, Movement Actions, and Defensive Actions.

Standard Actions
Most actions your character takes are considered Standard Actions, be it swinging their sword, picking up an item, or opening a door. Any kind of Standard Action whose outcome is uncertain requires the player to perform a roll. When performing a roll, the DM will ask for a relevant attribute and skill. By looking at your character sheet, determine your combined score - this is known as your dice pool. Roll all the dice in your dice pool, and count how many dice turned up as 6 or higher. These dice count as "successes". Most actions will have a difficulty level, meaning you need a certain amount of successes to perform that action. If you do not get enough successes when rolling, your character fails at what they were trying to do.

Botches and Criticals
Boulders & Barbarians uses d10s - that is, ten-sided dice. In addition to successes, be on the lookout for dice that turn up as either 1 or 10 (10 is shown as 0 on most dice). Every 1 you roll removes a success from the total roll. If you have no successes on a roll, either through getting enough 1s to cancel out your successes or simply not rolling any successes to begin with, the roll is called a botch. On a botch, your character fails the undertaken action in some horrible way, often with negative consequences. It can sometimes be better not to try performing an action that you are likely to botch - feel free to ask the DM what attribute and skill you would need to take an action before you act.

10s count as regular successes. However, if you get two 10s on the same roll, the roll is called a critical success - or just critical, for short. On a critical success, your character always succeeds at what they were trying to do, often with an amplified effect. For example, if you were trying to persuade a guard to let you pass and you rolled a critical success, he might be moved to give you a permanent pass into the city.

Movement and Defensive Actions
Moving around - running, jumping, climbing - are considered Movement Actions. Lastly, there are actions taken in response to your environment. Even if it's not your turn in combat, you still get to react to any actions that would directly affect your character, like being attacked by an enemy. Defensive actions let you dodge, block, parry, or perform any other relevant action in response to what's happening around you. The DM determines what you are and aren't allowed to do as a defensive action.

Combat
Generally, Boulders & Barbarians is played free-form, meaning the players simply state what their characters do as they do so. However, during combat the flow of the game is altered somewhat in the interest of structure and giving everyone a good overview of what is happening at any given time. During combat, the players, as well as any other characters that are involved, take turns performing actions. Turn order is determined by your initiative score, and during your turn you may make one Movement Action and one Standard Action. You may also make Defensive Actions as you normally would.

Initiative
Your Initiative Score is determined by your Instinct and Awareness. The character with the highest Instinct acts first, followed by the second highest, and so on. In the case of a tie, the character with the highest Awareness acts first. For simplicity's sake, enemies usually act together, and their place in the turn order is determined by their combined Instinct and Awareness values. Keeping track of initiative is the DM's job, and as a player is not something you have to worry too much about. If you are in doubt, you can always ask the DM what the current turn order is.

Save Rolls
Whenever you are hit by an attack, you get to make an Armor Save and a Fortitude Save, respectively. To make an Armor Save, roll 1d10. If the result comes up as high or higher than your Armor Score (sometimes shortened to [as]), your armor has absorbed the blow and you do not take a wound or become stunned.

If your Armor Save fails, you still get to make a Fortitude Save. To do so, roll another d10, and compare the result to your FOR, plus any applicable modifiers. Every point of FOR you have decreases the number you have to roll to succeed, starting at 10+. So for example, a character with 4 points in Fortitude would need to roll a 7 or higher to succeed his Fortitude Save, giving him an effective fortitude score (shortened to [efs]) of 7+.

Note that you do not have to take either type of save if you don't want to.

Stuns
Certain things, like unarmed attacks or bashing someone with a shield or a large weapon, can stun an opponent. If you are stunned, your next turn is skipped, and you cannot take Defensive Actions until the next turn of whatever stunned you. Although being stunned does not inflict a wound in and of itself, it leaves you exposed, and stunning opponents can sometimes be far more valuable than wounding them.

Grappling
Most actions are performed simply by rolling an attribute and skill together. Grappling however, has its own subset of rules. To initiate a grapple, roll (STR + Brawl). The opponent gets to defend with their (STR + Brawl). If you are successful, they are considered grappled. During their turn, they may roll (STR + Brawl) against your (STR + Brawl) to break free. For the duration of the grapple, both of you are considered stunned, and any attack that hits one of you hits the other as well. However, you may release the grapple at any point, including outside of your turn. By doing so, you still get to perform Defensive Actions as normal.

Wounds
Certain things, primarily attacks, will cause you to take a wound. Wounds represent your character's decaying state of health. If you ever take a third wound, your character permanently dies. There is no death save roll, there are no magic spells to bring you back, and player characters do not get any favoritism from the DM over any other characters in the game. Life is harsh in the world of Boulders & Barbarians, and it is always best to avoid combat when possible. Sometimes the odds will be stacked against you, and you will be better served trying to escape or dropping your arms and pleading for your life than fighting until the end. If your character dies, you are allowed to introduce a new character to play at the beginning of the next story arc. New characters always start at level one, meaning that should you die, you lose all your progress, other than what gear your party might scavenge off of your corpse.

Resting
You can heal wounds by getting a full rest. There are two types of rest, namely partial rests and full rests. A full rest means getting 10 or more hours of uninterrupted sleep in a reasonably safe location. A partial rest means getting 7 or more hours of sleep, allowing for some interruptions - for example, setting up a night guard. Although a partial rest does not restore wounds, it will ensure you do not suffer any ill effects from not resting. For every day you do not get at least a partial rest, you will suffer a stacking debuff that reduces all your attributes by 1. This can reduce an attribute to 0, which means that any actions taken involving said attribute will automatically botch.

Serious injuries
In addition to wounds, you may suffer a serious injury. An injury could be breaking an arm, severe internal bleeding, catching a dangerous disease, or any other similar injury. Injuries, unlike wounds, do not recover by themselves, and you will not recover wounds from resting if you are injured. To cure an injury, you will need proper treatment, which usually involves a Medicine roll and long time to rest. Combat in Boulders & Barbarians is always dangerous, but it is doubly so if you are injured.

Terminology
The following is a list of terms and acronyms used in B&B.

Attributes
see: Attributes
 * STR - Strength
 * FOR - Fortitude
 * AGI - Agility
 * DEX - Dexterity
 * INT - Intellect
 * INS - Instinct
 * WIL - Willpower
 * PER - Perception
 * CHA - Charisma
 * MAN - Manipulation
 * APP - Appearance
 * EMP - Empathy

Misc

 * B&B - Boulders & Barbarians
 * Crit - Critical Success (see: Botches and Criticals)
 * [eas] - Effective Armor Score (see: Save Rolls)
 * [efs] - Effective Fortitude Score (see: Save Rolls)