Lodstone RPG

You can find the online version of the Lodstone SRD here.

Introduction

Lodstone is a role-playing game, meaning players create characters and act out their characters' actions to work together to tell a story with the help of their Guide. The Guide is a player of sorts whose job it is to supply the characters with the framework of the story. The Guide constructs the world, plays bad guys, sets traps, builds dungeons, and sends monsters to terrorize the players. The whole group is responsible for creating a story that they all enjoy.

Lodstone is built on consistency. A player's character will always be good at the thing they chose to be good at. The higher a player makes a stat or skill, the lower their character's chance of failure. This allows for characters that are consistent and reliable, which makes story-telling smoother. It may seem like this makes games predictable, but there are many aspects of every role-playing game that the characters simply cannot control.

Structure

Lodstone uses the wonderful Caltrop Core at its core, and characters' stats represent pools of d4's that a player uses to resolve character actions. Characters have eleven stats which are used to interact with NPCs, make attack rolls, or to avoid some danger that the character may face. Most stats are determined randomly and allocated by the player, while others are granted by some archetype.

Besides stats, a character also has a set of skills. These skills represent how a character specializes, whether a character wants to focus on skills that make them a good spy, or if they'd rather be a rugged outdoors-man. Skills are chosen by a player to represent their character.

The last, and some may say most important, aspect of Lodstone is called Saving Throws. These are special rolls that don't quite follow the same rules as stat rolls. Saving throws are made to resist certain negative effects, such as spells, a dragon's fire breath, and even death. We talk more about saving throws in detail later in the Introduction.

Lodstone does not use only d4's, however. It uses the full range of standard RPG dice. Characters have classes that use different dice to determine their Health. Lodstone also has a wide array of weapons that are fully OSR-compatible.

Playing

Lodstone is intended to be played on a hexagonal map, where each hexagon is 1 meter in its shortest dimension. As well, Lodstone is intended for long-form play with sessions of a campaign. However, like any RPG, Lodstone can be played in short one-offs.

Races

When you create your character you can choose from a variety of races, from the standard Elf, Dwarf, and Human, to the more exotic Gila, Draconian, and Artifact! Each race has an initial feature and gain an additional feature whenever they become stronger.

Classes

Your character's archetype is represented by their class. There are currently 5 classes: Bard, Diplomat, Knight, Monk, and Ronin. Each class has unique abilities and strengths.

Combat

Lodstone has a unique combat system that is intended to replicate real-time combat. Melee attacks always hit, unless your target moved before your swing connected.

Equipment

Lodstone is compatible with any traditional RPG item. However, this SRD provides descriptions for items that depend on length or space, like lights and rope.

Character Advancement

As characters adventure and earn XP they gain abilities from their chosen archetype, increase their stats, and even learn to manifest their Resolve.