Introduction for Beginning Players

[1.25] (“[1.25]” for short) is a role playing adventure game. In the [1.25] rules, individuals play the role of characters in a fantasy world where magic is real and heroes adventure out on dangerous quests in search of fame and fortune. Characters gain experience by overcoming perils and recovering treasures. As characters gain experience, they grow in power and ability.

At least two persons are needed to play this game, though the game is most enjoyable when played by a group of four to six people.

This game, unlike others, does not use a playing board of actual playing pieces. All that is needed to play are these rules, a set of special dice, pencil and paper, graph paper, and imagination. The game may be more exciting if miniature figures of the characters and monsters are used, but the game can be played without such aids.

When a group plays a [1.25] game, one person acts as a referee and is known as the Dungeon Master (“DM”). It is the DM’s job to prepare the setting for each adventure before the game begins. Others play the roles of fantasy characters and are called the players. Each player’s character is called a Player Character (“PC”). Other characters met in the game, who are controlled by the Dungeon Master, are called Non-player Characters (“NPCs”).

[1.25] is a world. Of course, this world is not complete. It needs organizers and adventurers to order and explore it. It needs you!

A fantasy role playing game is an exercise in imagination and personal creativity. The organizer of the campaign, the Dungeon Master, must use the system to devise an individual and unique world. Into this world of weird monsters, strange peoples, multitudinous states, and fabulous treasures of precious items and powerful magic stride fearless adventurers—you and your fellow players.

Inexperienced and of but small power at first, by dint of hard fighting and clever deeds, these adventurers advance in ability to become forces to be reckoned with—high priests or priestesses, lords, wizards and arch-magi, master thieves. The abilities of each adventurer are fixed, but even such characteristics as Strength, Intelligence, and Wisdom are mutable in a fantasy world.

By means of group co-operation and individual achievement, an adventurer can become ever more powerful. Even death loses much of its sting, for often the character can be resurrected, or reincarnated. And should that fail there is always the option to begin again with a new character. Thus [1.25] is, as are most role playing games, open-ended. There is no “winner”, no final objective, and the campaign grows and changes as it matures.

As with most other role playing games, this one is not just a single-experience contest. It is an ongoing campaign, with each playing session related to the next by results and participant characters who go from episode to episode. As players build the experience level of their characters and go forth seeking ever greater challenges, they must face stronger monsters and more difficult problems of other sorts (and here the Dungeon Master must likewise increase his or her ability and inventiveness). While initial adventuring usually takes place in an underworld dungeon setting, play gradually expands to encompass other such dungeons, town and city activities, wilderness explorations, and journeys into other dimensions, planes, times, worlds, and so forth. Players will add characters to their initial adventurer as the milieu expands so that each might actually have several characters, each involved in some separate and distinct adventure form, busily engaged in the game at the same moment of “Game Time”. This allows participation by many players in games which are substantially different from game to game as dungeon, metropolitan, and outdoor settings are rotated from playing to playing.

A good Dungeon Master will most certainly make each game a surpassing challenge for his or her players. Treasure and experience gained must be taken at great risk or by means of utmost cleverness only. If the game is not challenging, if advancement is too speedy, then it becomes staid and boring. Conversely, a game can be too deadly and become just as boring, for who enjoys endlessly developing new characters to march off into oblivion in a single night of adventuring?!

Skilled players always make a point of knowing what they are doing, i.e. they have an objective. They co-operate—particularly at lower levels or at higher ones when they must face some particularly stiff challenge—in order to gain their ends. Superior players will not fight everything they meet, for they realize that wit is as good a weapon as the sword or the spell. When weakened by wounds, or nearly out of spells and vital equipment, a clever group will seek to leave the dungeons in order to rearm themselves. (He who runs away lives to fight another day.) When faced with a difficult situation, skilled players will not attempt endless variations on the same theme; when they find the method of problem solving fails to work, they begin to devise other possible solutions. Finally, good players will refrain from pointless argument and needless harassment of the Dungeon Master. Mistakes are possible, but they are better righted through reason and logic, usually at the finish of play for the day.

While the material in this booklet is referred to as rules, that is not really correct. In many places they are guidelines and suggested methods only. This is part of the attraction of [1.25], and it is integral to the game. Rules not understood should have appropriate questions directed to the publisher; disputes with the Dungeon Master are another matter entirely.

The referee is the final arbiter of all affairs of his or her campaign.

How to Play the Game

The play of the [1.25] game unfolds according to this basic pattern.

The DM describes the environment. The DM tells the players where their adventurers are and what’s around them, presenting the basic scope of options that present themselves (how many doors in a room, what’s on a table, who’s in the tavern, and so on).

The players describe what they want to do. Sometimes one player speaks for the whole party, saying, “We’ll take the east door,” for example. Other times, different adventurers do different things: one adventurer might search a treasure chest while a second examines an esoteric symbol engraved on a wall and a third keeps watch for monsters. The players don’t need to take turns, but the DM listens to every player and decides how to resolve those actions. Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a roam and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action.

The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions. Describing the results often leads to another decision point, which brings the flow of the game back to step one.

This pattern holds whether the adventurers are cautiously exploring a ruin, talking to a devious prince, or locked in mortal combat against a mighty dragon. In certain situations, particularly combat, the action is more structured and the players (and DM) do take turns choosing and resolving actions. But most of the time, play is fluid and flexible, adapting to the circumstances of the adventure.

Often the action of an adventure takes place in the imagination of the players and DM, relying on the DM’s verbal descriptions to set the scene. Some DMs like to use music, art, or recorded sound effects to help set the mood, and many players and DMs alike adopt different voices for the various adventurers, monsters, and other characters they play in the game. Sometimes, a DM might lay out a map and use tokens or miniature figures to represent each creature involved in a scene to help the players keep track of where everyone is.

A meeting between player characters and monsters is called an encounter. During an adventure the player characters will also discover treasure and try to avoid dangerous traps as well as encounter monsters. Sometimes, of course, the player characters will have to fight monsters. Such a fight is referred to as a melee.

In [1.25] rules, actions completed by player characters gain them experience, which is earned as experience points (or “XP”). Experience points are given out by the DM at the end of each adventure. Player characters continue to gain experience points for each adventure they participate in.

Use of the word “Level”

The term level has multiple meanings in this game system.

Level as an indication of character power. A player character begins the game at 1st level, i.e. the lowest possible level for a player character. The higher the level number, the more powerful the character is.

Level as used to indicate the depth of the dungeon complex beneath the ground. The 1st level of a dungeon is the first layer of the underground complex of tunnels, passages, rooms, chambers, and so forth. It is the 1st level beneath the ground. Beneath the 1st level is the 2nd, below that is the 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. The higher the number, the lower the dungeon level (and possibly the more hazardous its perils).

Level as a measure of magic spell difficulty. The magic spells available to some classes of characters are graded by difficulty factor—which, incidentally, reflects the spells’ effectiveness to some extent. 1st level spells are the basic ones available to beginning characters. They are generally the least powerful spells. Next come 2nd level spells, then come 3rd level spells, and so on. The highest level of any type of magic spell is 9th level, spells usable only by 18th level magic-users—lesser magic-users can possibly employ such spells under certain circumstances which are explained hereafter, but only at considerable risk.

Level as a gauge of a “monster’s” potential threat. Relatively weak creatures, monsters with few hit points, limited or non-existent magical abilities, those which do little damage when attacking, and those which have weak, or totally lack, venom are grouped together and called 1st level monsters. Slightly more powerful creatures are ordered into 2nd level, then comes 3rd, 4th, 5th, and so on all the way up to 10th level (the highest, which includes the greatest monsters, demon princes, etc.).

Dice

In D&D rules, many different kinds of dice are used to give a variety of results. Though these dice appear strange at first, they will quickly become a familiar part of the game. Dice required are a 4-sided die, a 6-sided die, an 8-sided die, a 10-sided die, a 12-sided die, and a 20-sided die. For easy reading, all of the dice are marked with numbers. When referring to dice, an abbreviation is often used. The first number in the abbreviation is the number of dice to be rolled, followed by the letter “d” (short for die or dice), and then a number for the type of dice used (e.g. “d20”). For example, 5d8 means an 8-sided die rolled 5 times, and would generate a total from 5 to 40. The 0 on the d10 is read as “10”. The d10 can also be used to generate a percentage (a number from 1 to 100). To do so, roll the d10 twice: the first roll gives the “tens” number, and the second roll gives the “ones” number. Thus, a roll of 5 followed by a roll of 3 would be read as 53. A roll of 0 followed by another roll of 0 equals 100. Generating a number from 1 to 100 will be referred to as rolling percentage dice (or d%).