Playing the Game
Epochrypha is a fantasy role-playing game, set in the world of Zsenai, after generations of imperial expansion, y, and negotiations with the strange denizens of the Spirit Realm. As players, your role is to achieve x, y, and z through the choices of your hero, or contribute x, y, and z, through the role of the Game Master. … leave every character changed; a few changed into someone worth remembering.
Rules in this section guide you through the process of character creation for the ehro you will control the fate of in the world of Zsenai, one of many Epochs this game can be set in. If you want the world’s particulars before you build anyone, read Zsenai first and come back. If you’d rather start making a character now, keep going — everything you strictly need is below.
The player contract
Section titled “The player contract”The GM is a player too. They aren’t running the game at you, and they aren’t your opponent — and in this system that’s more than a pleasantry. Roughly half of all rolls hand the GM a point of pressure regardless of what anyone at the table wants. When things get harder, that’s usually the dice, not the GM deciding you should suffer. Reading it as an attack will make everyone miserable and won’t make it stop.
Beyond that, the usual: show up, pay attention, leave room for the quieter people, and take the game about as seriously as the people you’re playing it with.
Epochrypha is two things stacked.
The core rules — this section — cover how to resolve an action, how characters grow, and how a fight works. They never change.
An Epoch supplies the world: where you are, what magic is, what wealth means, and what a sword can do to a person. Epochs are swappable. The same core rules run a game about spirit-bound pact-holders in a bronze-and-iron world and a game about something else entirely.
Your sheet is the same in every Epoch. All twelve scores are named here and mean the same thing wherever you play — what changes is what they point at. Aura is always your conduit to power; which power depends on the world. Favor is always what you can call on; what that buys you is the Epoch’s business.
Start here
Section titled “Start here”Making a roll is the whole engine. Every check in the game — talking, fighting, binding, buying — is that one procedure. Read it once and most of the rest is detail.
What’s in this section
Section titled “What’s in this section”| Page | Answers |
|---|---|
| Making a roll | How do I resolve anything? |
| Attributes | What’s on my sheet and what does each thing do? |
| Luck | What do I get on half of all rolls, and when should I spend it? |
| Opposed checks | What happens when we’re rolling against each other? |
| Creating a character | How do I make one? |
| Combat | How does a fight work? |
| Advancement | How does my character get better? |
| Reference | Everything above, on one printable page |
Elsewhere
Section titled “Elsewhere”Running the Game is the GM side — spending Toll, building opposition, making rulings. Nothing in it is needed to play.
Epochs are the worlds. Your Epoch decides what your character’s power, standing, and weapons actually are — and supplies the Backgrounds, Jobs, Archetypes, and Experience Trees you build from.