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 full set of polyhedral dice (the same set Mörk Borg or D&D asks for), a pencil, and friends with a sense of humor about death. Your character will probably not survive the session.
Shitty buddies
Forest creatures living in the cracks of a city that hates them. Roll a d6 for your species, or fucking 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(?). You see everything from the sky and understand fucking 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: roll with advantage when scavenging, using tools, picking locks, and opening latches or sealed junk.
- Kinda fat though: easy to spot, but you swing heavy objects without penalty.
What are darts
Cigarettes. The load-bearing Canadianism. Your shitty buddy steals them from humans, lights up, and logs the burn.
A dart is the unit, not the object. One whole cigarette is two darts — light it, take your half, hand it off. The half-smoked one you lifted off a human is still worth a dart. Smoking two in a row is how you choke.
Smoke six over a career and you ascend to Nicotine Nirvana™. You win, permanently. Leave the table a legend.
Why cigarettes? Duh. Nicotine is rad.
- What do you want?
Darts. Six of them. Ascend, leave the table a legend, and make the next shitty buddy jealous. Why that bad? Duh. Nicotine is rad.
- Why will you die?
Because everything is trying to kill you and the math is not on your side: police, animal control, slashers, the occasional spellcasting accident (fail the roll and you die, immediately, no save).
You get one mercy: anyone can attempt a Tail Mary: sacrifice your tail, once per game, to reroll any die.
- How does it actually run?
Stats are Reflex, Instinct, Rage, and Guts, rolled on 3d6. When something matters, roll a d20 against a difficulty rating (DR) the GM sets, add your stat modifier. Loot comes off d20 tables. Spells come out of Profane Passages and cost you dearly. That's most of the rules; the rest is flavour, and the flavour is the point.
If you've played Mörk Borg, you already know these bones: Dart Rats is proudly compatible.
- Is it mean?
To its characters, brutally. To people at the table, never. The filth aims up at institutions (police, animal control, the concept of property).
Lift up your fellow shitty forest creatures. You're in this together.
- Where do I get it?
The rules, the 20-spell table, and every loot table are live right now in the Field Guide. Get rolling tonight.