Core Principles

Baroque and Bullets is based on the following principles:

Greed-Directed Exploration

Player are sent, by duty, obligation or despair into a dangerous and unknown land to look for precious resources and come back with it. The deeper they go into the land, the more resource they will find, but the more dangerous the land will be. And not only they have to find the resource, but come back to deliver it!

<aside> <img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/906a2635-23c0-4f62-a75c-457144d6121e/4083c452-f622-498b-91f6-ea7d61a3105d/exclamation-w.png" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/906a2635-23c0-4f62-a75c-457144d6121e/4083c452-f622-498b-91f6-ea7d61a3105d/exclamation-w.png" width="40px" /> Design Note The greed is only an excuse on why a character would desperately need to go forward, what this principle is about forcing a player to always ask themselve: Maybe one more step?

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Balance of Tension

The game utilizes a clever combination of a deck of playing cards and traditional polyhedral dice to establish a balanced level of player control over the narrative. When a player successfully performs a risky action, they add (mostly) red cards to their hand, gradually increasing the number of black cards in the rest of the deck. Since black cards are always associated with negative outcomes, this design encourages players to strategically burn their cards by returning them to the deck to prevent the deck from becoming overwhelmed with black cards.

Power at a Price

A constant Affliction is poisoning both land and player characters, this Affliction is both an indication of close by resources and the fuel for the more powerful abilities of the player characters. But it will kill the player characters if they are not managing this Affliction carefully. Not only that, but it is changing the player characters.

Narrative Control

Whether through trial rolls or fate rolls, the game's core resolution engine determines who currently holds control of the narrative and what options they have for their next move. It's not so much about clear-cut success or failure, but rather about who has the power to shape the direction of the story.

Risk-Taking

Whether in moments of success or setbacks, the game always pushes the story forward. It achieves this by providing mechanical rewards to the player in any situation. Successful actions grant players cards that can be used to activate special abilities, while setbacks allow players to earn XP, which will ultimately make them more powerful.

Something about monster and invention generation

By introducing tools to create on the fly new and interesting monsters as well as cool artefact and invention the player character can use, the system will be designed to help spark ideas around the table to create a uniquely weird experience.

<aside> <img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/906a2635-23c0-4f62-a75c-457144d6121e/4083c452-f622-498b-91f6-ea7d61a3105d/exclamation-w.png" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/906a2635-23c0-4f62-a75c-457144d6121e/4083c452-f622-498b-91f6-ea7d61a3105d/exclamation-w.png" width="40px" /> Design Note That’s it? Some are so vague and even incomplete!

Absolutely, keep in mind that I’m writing as I go along the conception of the game, so expect that there will be a bunch of unfinished stuff (yet!)

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