RADCrawl is my love letter to high fantasy skirmish games, tactics video games, and game design as play. It is somewhat closer to being a board game than many other fantasy skirmish games and owes quite a bit to 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (author’s note: the best D&D). The game is meant to be played either at a table with minis and a map or online on your favorite VTT. It’s meant to be light, fun, weird, easily expanded, and a part of a growing ecosystem. RADCrawl is a game of big personas that engage in heroic combat for the love of battle and the game.
<aside> 💬 A note on designing through writing: Throughout this book, you’ll see sections in little boxes like this one. Those parts are designer commentary, additional information about the intent of the game, and generally things you don’t need to read before battling little guys. If you don’t care about that stuff, skip it. The mechanics, the hard rules of the game, will not be included in them. If you are reading this to play your first game with your friend watching you from across the table, you will miss nothing by not reading these.
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RADCrawl is a game for two players. It is meant to play in a skirmish in a couple of hours tops. I’ve not tested this extensively, so both players should be enthusiastic to play in case it goes longer.
If you do play and have thoughts about the game, please feel free to reach out to me or check out the Quick Start Play Survey so that I can make the game better, put your name in the playtesters section, and rebalance as necessary.
Before starting to play you’ll need the following:
A Minis Map: Print/upload one from the attached materials or your favorite mapper
8ish 6-sided dice per person
Minis: Print/upload from attached materials, use your own fancy ones, or just grab whatever minis you can keep track of
Character Cards: You’ll choose 5 character cards per person, if you’re printing them you may want to choose before printing
Tokens or Pencils and Paper: For tracking HP and other effects
Tokens, coins, or markers: For tracking map effects
Each player chooses a team.
Randomly drop one character
<aside> 💬 Or choose which one you don’t want. I’m still working out how much fun the randomness of this part is. Also, I’m not your dad, do whatever you want with all these rules.
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<aside> 💬 Alternately, you can choose a character from a team that wasn’t chosen by a player.
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This game works similar to other skirmish games. If there are holes in the rules, work with your opponent to make a call and keep that rule for the rest of the battle. Then, if you feel like it, let me know where that hole was.
If a rule on a card or character contradicts what’s written in the book, trust the card. Essentially add “unless the card says otherwise” to every sentence in the book.
When you need to roll, grab # worth of six-sided dice and roll them at once. Any number that is greater than or equal to the difficulty or defense level of your roll is a hit. For example, if the difficulty level is 4, a roll of 4, 5, or 6 counts as a hit. Count up the number of hits
Most rolls are done competitively with you rolling a handful of dice against your opponent’s defense level. Depending upon what type of attack you are using, it will target Melee, Ranged, Arcane, or Will defense. Your difficulty level is the same as their defense level for that type of attack.
<aside> 💀 Beins and Bufo have enormous melee defense! You’ll need a 4 or higher to hit them! On the other hand, if you go for Ranged, Arcane, or Will you’ll only have to hit a 2 or higher for a hit. Notice that their defense is 1 higher for any attack that has a push effect. Nobody pushes them around!
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If there are no hits after defense, the attack doesn’t hit.
If there are hits after defense, the attack usually does damage equal to the number of hits left.
Some attacks may say ‘non-damaging’, those do an effect without causing damage.
If an attack has multiple targets, roll once and apply the results to all targets.
When a character’s HP hits zero, they’re dead. Knock over their figure. Healing effects do not work on them.
When a team is all dead, they lose. Shake hands, high five, or otherwise acknowledge a game well played.
You get an Action and a Movement. You can use them in any order, including using your action part way through your movement. When both are done, your turn ends and the next player goes.
Do the action listed on your card. Almost all actions are attacks because we’re here to fight. They will generally have:
#d: The number of dice rolled
Range: How far away your target can be. If ranged, count squares up to the listed number. If melee, an adjacent square to your unit.
Spread: How many squares are effected. If there is no number, it is one target.
Additional Effects
Move your character a number of squares equal to your movement. You may move horizontally or orthagonally.
Your movement may be affected by the following effects:
Squares may be affected by the following effects:
Specials are actions that are not done in the normal flow of turns. These may happen on an opponent's turn or on your turn. They break down roughly into:
A Follow-Up adds dice to an attack against Ed a flanked opponent. If you are on one side of an opponent and an ally is attacking from the opposite square, you are considered flanking. Add the dice from your Follow Up to the roll and apply any additional effects. They directly increase the attack being done. Characters that tend to strike and do damage are more likely to have Follow-Ups.
An Opportunity is an effect that kicks in when a target moves out of the Hero’s melee threatened area. Unless the Hero stats say otherwise, this is the 8 squares surrounding them.
A Reaction does an additional effect that does not necessarily target the enemy being attacked. It is resolved seperately from the initial attack. Characters that buff, heal, debuff, or control the field are more likely to have Reactions.
As with any project being produced in the light of day, there’s a possibility that any of this can change. I think this should be a fun way to have small scale battles that can be re-imagined in a variety of ways. I think there’s a definite possibility that included in that is swapping over how RADCrawl works. Definitely it includes making rules for Pommel Ball.
I really enjoy making characters in this style and I hope that other people do too! If you do decide to go for that, please let me know so that I can shout your name from the rooftops, tweet about it, and push people to check out your work. I’m going to be releasing files for easy upload of the card style.
This game has some physical and digital requirements that I’m still figuring out; it needs minis, easy to reference playsheets, maps. It might need advancement and it probably needs a league structure. I intend to keep finding ways to make it weirder.
If you have comments or suggestions, please feel free to send them my way!