This is Annulus, a system for playing tabletop RPGs. Annulus is a game about solving puzzles and overcoming problems with your friends as part of an ongoing cooperative narrative. One player is called the GM (or “referee”). You now have all the necessary context and vocabulary to understand what's going on here.

It's also in a continuous beta state, with many rules and explanations existing only incompletely on this site itself. If something is vague or contradictory, ask me what it means at the table.

The basic rules live on the character sheet.

Due to no current or planned playtesting campaign, detailed changelogs will not be kept at this time. Major conceptual shifts:

• Conditions. There are now 12 “standard” conditions instead of an indefinite list of however many. “Elemental” conditions (like Burning, Frozen, Charged, etc) are a separate thing that mostly only appears when using a specific elemental class.
  • Prone is not a standard condition and has been effectively removed from the game. Too many special rules and qualifiers on it.
• Weapons. Using both actions in a round to make a weapon attack (making a “double-attack”) now costs 1 Endurance for the second action. You can still unleash heavy burst damage, but it comes with a minor cost. This will hopefully solve some of the fragility issues with healthy players getting insta-nuked by a bunch of double-attacking enemies.
  • All weapons now inflict one of three conditions from the 12 standard conditions list when the trigger die is 10+. This makes conditions much more important and relevant to play in general.
  • Critical hits now simply deal double damage. All critical hits now happen on a 12 only, including weapons that used to have an expanded crit range.
  • Renamed Flow/Endurance/Vitality to Attention/Energy/Flesh- less abstract and easier to comprehend what they actually mean.

The new version is here, more or less! I'm calling this particular revision “Compact”.

Compact has a new ability system in place that is mostly similar to the old, but with a few key changes:

• Limited. The maximum number of abilities that you can learn is equal to your level. You cannot change your loadout.
• Level-Integrated. Learning a new ability happens as part of the level-up procedure and requires an appropriate keystone. It does not require any Supply. You cannot level up unless you have a keystone matching the ability you wish to learn, but can continue banking XP until you do.
• Condensed. Since you cannot change loadouts depending on the situation, many of the more situational abilities have been combined or empowered to make them worthwhile. Ability trees have six abilities in each instead of ten.
• Rebranded. Ability trees are now referred to as “classes”- if you use a bow, you've got one or more levels in the Archer class instead of the Bow tree. You can and should multiclass freely.
• Streamlined. All classes have the same ability structure: the root class ability and five different add-on abilities representing further training. You need the root ability in order to take any other add-on abilities, but that's as far as the nesting structure goes. Information blocks have also been redesigned to help you understand what your abilities can do more quickly and easily.
• Unlockable. You cannot learn an ability unless its class has been unlocked, even if you've got a keystone for it. Unlocking a new class requires research, which consumes keystones and (optionally) Supply. Once a class has been researched it gets unlocked for everybody in the campaign, not just the one who completed the research.
  • Keystones of a locked class can be sacrificed to allow research attempts. This requires a day of experimentation and cannot be done in the middle of a dungeon. Roll a die when performing research; if the result is a 12 then a breakthrough occurred and the class is immediately unlocked. If not, you can try again by sacrificing another keystone. Every keystone sacrificed for research permanently lowers the die number required for future research attempts in that class by 1 point- so the second research attempt for a given class only requires an 11+, the third a 10+, and so on. Research difficulty will be noted on the classes page.
  • You can also spend 3 Supply to make a research attempt. Unlike via sacrificing keystones, Supply-driven research does not lower the research difficulty if the check is a failure. 3 Supply can be much easier to come by than a relevant keystone, however, so the option is there.

The latest version of the settlements system is also rather different from what's come before.

• Retirement-Driven: Instead of being directly purchasable, settlements are primarily developed and customized via a different, somewhat more precious resource: retired adventurers.
• Enterprises: When an adventurer retires, they can choose to add one or more “Enterprises” to an existing settlement. Enterprises are useful effects that later adventurers can take advantage of like curio shops, schools, etc.
• Class-Dependent: Every enterprise effect is tied directly to one or more classes- for example, the Pantry enterprise (which feeds adventurers locally for free) is tied to the Chef or Survivor classes.
• Requirements: To create an enterprise on retirement, an adventurer must have at least one level in a relevant class and spend Supply (amount varies depending on how many abilities are known and what ranking the adventurer is). An adventurer can create multiple enterprises at once if they have the relevant training and cash for it.

• Flat Health. Vitality/Endurance/Flow no longer scale with level, and everybody from simple peasants to mighty dragons have exactly 5. Combat ratings (Melee/Remote/Area) still do scale with level as normal.
• Failure Chance Smoothing. Failure chances from all sources are all in multiples of 3 now instead of sometimes being 3 and sometimes being 4. 12s still always hit.
• Critical Formula Change. Critical hits no longer completely ignore defense, as this would lead to a lot more insta-gibs than before. A critical hit applies double Escalation to damage instead of normal Escalation (in addition to applying the Bleeding condition, which is pretty good all by itself).
• Injury. Creatures have a 50% chance of being injured every time they lose Vitality regardless of how much they lost and how much they have left.
• Misery. Mechanics for things like being hungry, tired, stressed out, low on sleep, cold, or traumatized are all rolled together into a single mechanic called Misery. For every 3 points of Misery you have, you lose 1 Vitality that cannot be recovered until you decrease your overall Misery. Misery can be slowly removed by resting for a day (-1 Misery per day, anything that would cause further Misery prevents rest). You accumulate +1 Misery from the following situations:
  • A day without sustenance
  • A day of unpleasant environmental exposure (too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, etc)
  • A night of poor sleep
  • Gaining an injury
  • Witnessing an ally's death
  • A day of forced marching
  • Being dosed with radiation
  • Seeing something horrible
  • Etc

• Nodes. I pretty much already do this, but just to make it official: I hate counting squares on graph paper and measuring movement rates per second and all that jazz, so dungeon maps are a collection of “nodes” and their various connections. Nodes are noteworthy locations, generally equal to rooms- but a longass hallway could be its own node, and a particularly large room might have multiple nodes in it.
• Exploration Turns: Dungeon crawling is broken down into turns. During an exploration turn, the party can do any two things (called “procedures”) from the following list:
  • Have a battle
  • Perform a challenge
  • Move to a new dungeon node (can move two nodes if both are already mapped)
  • Search a node/mess around with stuff (reveals hidden secrets and traps)
  • Set up/use various abilities that require it
  • Patch somebody up (restore Vitality)
• Exploration Checks: At the end of each exploration turn, an exploration check is rolled. Most of the results on an exploration check are negative, meaning that there is pressure to not hang around in dangerous dungeons for too long.
  1. Surprise Encounter. The enemies go first.
  2. Even Encounter. Initiative is rolled normally.
  3. Choice Encounter. Players can strike first or evade the encounter entirely, maybe.
  4. Hunter. Like an encounter, but far away. Moves 1 node/turn closer to the party.
  5. Spoor. Like an encounter, but you only find hints or traces of it.
  6. Stress. Just being in the dungeon causes stress and pressure. Spend 1 Supply/Commissary Kit use or gain +1 Misery.
  7. Lights Burnout (Full). Spend Supply/Fuel to keep the lights on.
  8. Lights Burnout. Spend Supply/Fuel to keep the lights on. Illuminator lights (from the Outfitter class) are immune.
  9. Dungeon Effect (Major). The dungeon's specific major effect happens.
  10. Dungeon Effect (Minor). The dungeon's specific minor effect happens.
  11. Quiet Moment. Perform three procedures on the next exploration turn.
  12. Respite. Perform four procedures on the next exploration turn.