Field manual · for people who just got here
The Game
Dart Rats is a rules-light tabletop RPG for a GM and a handful of players. You need a d20, some d6s, a pencil, and friends with a sense of humor about death. A session runs an evening. A character rarely does.
Shitty buddies
Forest creatures living in the cracks of a city that hates them. Roll a d6 for your species, or just pick. Each comes with abilities and problems.
Rat
A damp miracle of spite and fleas. The city keeps trying to kill you, and you keep being too shitty to die.
- Too shitty to die: the first hit that would kill you leaves you at 1 HP instead.
- Just a lil guy: stealth with advantage.
Pigeon
Flying trash, with thoughts (question mark). You see everything from the sky and understand none of it.
- Gravity's ongoing failure: short flights are free; risky ones take a Reflex test.
- Dumb as fuck: spellcasting is harder for you (DR 14).
Raccoon
Shitty little hands, no morals. Every problem looks like a container, and every container looks openable.
- Trash hands: advantage on stealing, tools, locks, and sealed junk.
- Kinda fat though: easy to spot, but you swing heavy objects without penalty.
- What do you want?
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Darts. Cigarettes, stolen from humans. Smoke six over your career and you ascend: you win, permanently, and leave the table a legend. Why do they want smokes that bad? Duh. Nicotine is rad.
- Why will you die?
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Because everything is trying to kill you and the math is not on your side. Rat police, animal control, slashers, the occasional spellcasting accident (fail the roll and you die, no hedge, no rat cheat). Tables regularly burn through six creatures in a night. Rolling a new shitty buddy takes ten seconds, and the wake takes longer than the funeral.
You do get two mercies: rats are too shitty to die (once), and anyone can attempt a Tail Mary: sacrifice your tail, once per game, to reroll any die.
- How does it actually run?
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Stats are Reflex, Instinct, Rage, and Guts, rolled on 3d6. When something matters, roll a d20 against a difficulty the GM sets, add your stat. Loot comes off d20 tables. Spells come out of Profane Passages and cost you dearly. That's most of the rules; the rest is flavor, and the flavor is the point.
If you've played Mörk Borg, you already know these bones: Dart Rats is proudly compatible. Same skeleton, faster heartbeat.
- Is it mean?
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To its characters, brutally. To people at the table, never. The filth aims up at institutions (rat police, animal control, the concept of property) and the game ships with soft handles where it counts: drugs run on street-name abstractions with an opt-out tier, and the copy is de-gendered throughout. Come as you are; die as a raccoon.
- Where do I get it?
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The Field Guide has rules, spel table, loot tables, and art you can smell. The first print run lands at Dungeon Fest, with a PDF to follow. Until the shop page is live, write to RATKING@dartrats.com and a rat will get back to you.