After Sanctuary

After Sanctuary is an in-progress, experimental game of hopeful post-apocalypse high fantasy, Powered by the Apocalypse.

The game’s playbooks were original created for the Loose Playbooks Jam, but the game has been expanded slightly since, both doubling the number of playbooks and providing rules for threats and magic items. While the game is playable, it remains in somewhat of an "outline" state. Eventually, it may be expanded into a more conventional document.

The design of these playbooks intends to experiment with mechanical concepts not usually used in PbtA games. In particular:

• Actions are resolved using 2d12, rather than 2d6, using statistically similar targets for fail/partial/success. A key ramification here is that a +1 to a roll is half as potent.
• Resolution contains shades of an attribute+ability style, combining the values of two types of "stats" (each ranked 0-3).
• The "stats" that feed rolls are conceptual, and represent the "why" and "how" that goes into an action, not the "who" and "what".
• Playbooks are built to advance using a node graph that limits what can be upgraded at each step.
• Characters qualify for advancement by marking achievements as they happen. Advancement itself requires narrative in-game events.

It's possible that After Sanctuary will eventually become a full game. For now, this document can act as an early "alpha test".

Thumbnail background by Jim Dollar, CC BY-NC 2.0.