Six Shooter Universal RPG System v0.02

The Basics:

• Playing Equipment:
• A 52 card deck, jokers optional
• A six-sided die (backup dice in case it is lost are also a good idea)
• Paper for each player
• Pencils for each player

Operators:

Player characters are “Operators,” adventurers, explorers, criminals, mercenaries, and other people who live on the edge. Each Operator starts with a Descriptor, an Archetype, and a Lucky Number.

There are four Descriptors to choose from, each of which correlates to both a specific card suit and a way of solving problems, and which helps give an idea of what an Operator is best at. What Descriptor your Operator has influences how you can use cards (see below, under Playing the Game). The Descriptors are as follows:

• Dangerous (Clubs) – Weathering extreme environments, fighting with fists or weapons, moving heavy objects, and resisting damage. The best fighters are Dangerous.
• Sharp (Diamonds) – Solving riddles and academic problems, carefully observing the world around you, having just the right bit of knowledge, or breaking through digital security systems. The best thinkers are Sharp.
•  Sly (Spades) – Going unnoticed, disguising yourself, unlocking physical security systems, and picking pockets. The best sneaks are Sly.
• Charming (Hearts) – Persuading, deceiving, intimidating, negotiating, and networking. The best talkers are Charming.

An Operator’s Archetype has no direct bearing on game mechanics, but it is very important for helping make sense of how that Operator interacts with the world around them. An Archetype is a word or short phrase that you use to get across the most important parts of who your character is, what they can do, and how they fit into the world around them. For example, a medieval Knight and a wild-west Gunslinger will probably both be Dangerous and specialize in fighting, but the actions their rolls represent will probably be very different. Likewise, even within the same game, a medieval Knight and a medieval Famed Archer will approach the same situation in different ways and make the same rolls with different descriptions of their actions.

Your Operator’s Archetype should slot in nicely with the genre and tone of the game you’re playing. If you and your friends are playing a standard heroic fantasy game, you probably shouldn’t pick Noir Detective as your Archetype. In a gothic horror game, a Superhero will be similarly out of place.

Each player should pick a Lucky Number for their Operator from 2 to 10. No two Operators at the same table should start with the same Lucky Number.

Setting up the game:

Working clockwise around the table, have each player introduce their Operator, including their Descriptor, Archetype, Lucky Number, and whatever other information they’d like to share.

Shuffle the deck of cards. Clockwise around the table, have the Game Master (GM) deal six cards to each player, then place the rest of the deck in the middle of the table. Each player should place their six cards face-down in a line going from left to right in front of them. This line of cards is the player’s hand. Each card in the player’s hand represents a number from 1 to 6, with 1 being the leftmost card, and each subsequent card’s value increasing by 1, with 6 being the rightmost card.

Have each player turn one card of their choice from their hand face-up and begin the game.

Playing the game:

Deciding Turn Order: Whenever multiple players want to tackle the same challenge, have them draw from the center deck and immediately discard the cards they drew. The higher the value of the card a player draws, the higher they are in turn order. If two or more players tie, have them draw again, with the one with the higher card going before the other in the turn order.

It’s recommended that the GM keep a piece of scratch paper around to keep track of the current turn order.

If, at any point during the game, the deck runs out of cards, shuffle the discard pile and use it as the deck.

Overcoming Challenges:

Throughout the course of play, the characters will have to roll to try to complete certain objectives. However, the primary purpose of playing a tabletop game is for a group of people to improvise and tell a story together, so the GM should only ask for rolls and introduce that degree of randomness in certain situations; when there is a real possibility for characters to fail or have their fortunes change. Rolls are made with a six-sided die, and the outcome of the die roll is measured against something called the Critical Number.

The Critical Number represents the difficulty of the task the character is attempting, and has different effects on the game based on whether the outcome of a character’s die roll is lower than, greater than, or equal to the Critical Number.

• If the result of the roll is greater than the Critical Number, the Operator overcomes the challenge they are facing.
• If the result of the roll is equal to the Critical Number, the Operator overcomes the challenge, but the player must Roll Their Hand (see below).
• If the result of the roll is less than the Critical Number, the Operator does not overcome the challenge (and may have to deal with the in-story consequences of failure), and the player must Roll Their Hand.

A challenge’s Critical Number gives a rough idea of how difficult the challenge in question should be for the Operators. You don’t have to tell your players the exact Critical Numbers for challenges before they roll, but it’s generally polite to give them a rough idea of how difficult a certain challenge will be (or at least, how difficult it might seem to their Operators). Here’s some guidelines to give the GM a rough idea of how to assign Critical Numbers for challenges:

• 0 or lower – The Operator overcomes the challenge without having to roll. Challenges should not naturally have this Critical Number, but it can happen if the player uses a card (see below) to reduce the Critical Number of a challenge.
• 1 – The Operator is sure to succeed, but it might take a little effort and luck on their part to do so.
• 2 – There is a slight chance for the Operator to fail, but they’re still almost certain to succeed. This is a good ‘standard’ Critical Number for challenges, enemies, and obstacles that should wear Operators down but that they should be able to overcome just fine.
• 3 – The Operator will most likely succeed, but the chance of them failing is not insignificant.
• 4 – The Operator is as likely to fail as they are to succeed.
• 5 – There’s a slight chance for the Operator to succeed, but they’re far more likely to fail without rigging the odds in their favor.
• 6 – The Operator is almost certain to fail, and even succeeding will bring them a little closer to the day their luck runs out.
• 7 – The Operator will fail unless they use a card or the All Or Nothing rules (see below), and even then, their success is likely still far from assured. Multiple Strikes (see below) will never increase a Critical Number above 7.
• Impossible – There’s no point in the character rolling because what they’re trying is completely impossible within the bounds of the story you are telling, so they don’t roll and need to search for a different solution to the problem. For example, unless your game is set in a fairy tale world where people can climb moonbeams, a character attempting to climb moonbeams would result in this.

A single challenge might have multiple Critical Numbers, one each for trying to overcome a challenge through Danger, Sharpness, Slyness, or Charm. For example, a locked door challenge might have a Critical Number of 4 if an Operator uses Slyness to pick the lock, 5 if they try to break the door down, 7 to try to find some hidden weakness in the door with Sharpness, and be Impossible to overcome with Charm (of course, if there’s a guard with keys on the other side of the door, then that’s a different challenge altogether).

A character failing to overcome a challenge does not necessarily mean that they can’t try again. If there’s no time limit or imminent danger, then the only immediate consequence of failure might be the player having to Roll Their Hand. Of course, after a certain number of failures, the GM might decide to move the story along without the Operator having succeeded, with any consequences that follow being yet more challenges for the Operators to deal with.

Rolling Your Hand:

As mentioned above, when the result of your roll is equal to or less than a challenge’s Critical Number, you must Roll Your Hand. What this means is that you roll the die another time, then find the card in your hand that matches the number you rolled. What happens next depends on whether that card is face-down, face-up, or has already been discarded.

• If the card is face-down, flip it face-up.
• If the card is face-up, discard it without gaining any benefits.
• If the card has already been discarded and is missing, you gain a Strike.

Strikes:

Strikes are used to represent your Operator’s luck slowly but surely running out. For each Strike you have, the Critical Number of all challenges is increased by 1 (but never above 7) for your Operator and your Operator only. Once you get your third Strike, your Operator’s luck runs out completely and they are removed from play. This could be used to represent authorities catching them and taking them into custody, old enemies catching up to them, being too injured to continue with the adventure, or even dying.

Using Cards:

Throughout the game, you can use face-up cards from your hand to increase your Operator’s odds of success. You must declare your use of a card and discard it before you make a roll. The Critical Number for your roll is then reduced by a certain value based on the card you used:

• 2-10 – The Critical Number is reduced by 1.
• Jack – The Critical Number is reduced by 2.
• Queen – The Critical Number is reduced by 3.
• King – The Critical Number is reduced by 4.
• Ace – The Critical Number is reduced by 5.

Normally, you can only use a card if its suit matches up with the method you are using to try to overcome a challenge (clubs for Danger, diamonds for Sharpness, spades for Slyness, and hearts for Charm). The one exception is when the method you are using matches your Operator’s Descriptor, in which case you can use a card of any suit to reduce the Critical Number. For example, a Dangerous Operator has no clubs with which to improve his odds when trying to overcome a challenge in a Dangerous way, but he does have a face-up three of spades, which he uses instead.

You can also use a card to improve another Operator’s odds, but only if the suit of the card you are using, your Operator’s Descriptor, and the method they are using all match up. For example, if a Charming Operator is trying to sneak unnoticed past a guard with Slyness, the player of a Sly Operator can use her face-up jack of spades to reduce the Critical Number of the challenge by 2 for the Charming Operator. As above, the card must be used before the roll takes place.

Only 1 card can be used on any given roll.

Beyond the raw mechanical benefits, the use of cards is an excellent time for players to have an influence on the flow of the plot and let their Descriptor and Archetype shine. The reduction of the Critical Number of a challenge might be the result of an Operator using a special hidden ability or piece of technology, or a non-player-character ally showing up in the nick of time to help out. Essentially, the GM should let payers suggest plot twists or give their character a shining moment whenever they use a card, with face cards and Aces allowing for bigger twists and brighter moments.

All Or Nothing:

Certain high-tension situations, where an Operator takes a huge risk or puts everything on the line (a showdown at high noon is a good example) fall into All Or Nothing territory. If an Operator takes an All Or Nothing approach to overcome a challenge, they can wager any number of Strikes (though the Strikes wagered and the Strikes a player already has can total no more than 3) before making their roll. For each Strike wagered, the Critical Number of the roll is reduced by 1. If the Operator overcomes the challenge, the wagered Strikes do not take effect. If the Operator fails, then that player immediately gains a number of Strikes equal to the ones wagered, possibly enough to remove their Operator from the game.

Cards cannot be used on the same roll as All Or Nothing.

Both the GM and the players should be judicious about the use of All Or Nothing moments. This mechanic is especially designed to represent climactic scenes.

Lucky Numbers:

An Operator’s Lucky Number comes into play whenever their player discards a card with the matching value, whether it was the result of Rolling Their Hand or using that card. As soon as the card is discarded, the player can replace it by drawing a new card from the central deck and placing it face-up in their hand.

Combat:

Combat can be modeled two ways. The first is to treat each enemy as its own challenge, and the second is to treat a large group of weak enemies as a single challenge with a higher Critical Number. Both are valid options, and the GM should use whichever one serves a better role in the story at them current moment. Almost all combat is solved with Danger, though the GM can choose to reward creative players if they come up with a reasonable way to solve a combat encounter with a different method.

In Six Shooter games, the accumulation of damage and running out of an Operator’s luck go hand and hand, so there’s no damage mechanic; instead, damage is folded into Rolling Your Hand and Strikes. If a GM wants to introduce more immediate effects of damage, such as a character being knocked out, they can simply make that the cost of failing to overcome the challenge a certain number of times.

Multi-stage Challenges:

Some obstacles are too big to overcome with a single roll. For example, it would feel rather anti-climactic if the dragon that the Operatives have been tracking for the entire adventure goes down in the first turn of combat because the Dangerous Knight had a really lucky roll. 

To represent these advanced enemies, security systems, and other obstacles, use multi-stage challenges. In these cases, the Operatives must collectively succeed on a certain number of rolls before the challenge is overcome. Keep in mind that this exponentially increases the difficulty of challenges with high Critical Numbers.

Player Versus Player Rules:

Since the characters are all on the same team in most games, inner-group conflict should hopefully be rare and able to be solved through communication. Still, some groups may want to have contests between Operators at certain points in the game. To do so, use this rule:

The players of both Operators roll the die once. The player with the lower roll must then Roll Their Hand. If the rolls are equal, then both players must Roll Their Hand. Continue as necessary until one player either concedes defeat or gains a Strike, at which point their Operator loses the contest.

Strikes, using cards, and All Or Nothing all affect the outcome of your opponent player’s die roll the same way they would the Critical Number of a challenge.

Character Progression:

Six Shooter is a good system for pick-up games, but if the GM and players want to create a series of adventures for their characters, they can easily do so with these rules.

At the end of an adventure, if a player has an unused face card or Ace face-up in their hand, they can give one Operator at the table (including their own) an extra Lucky Number, chosen by that Operator’s player. No Operator can have more than two Lucky Numbers at any given time.

If a player gains three Strikes over the course of an adventure, their Operator is still removed from the current adventure, but can choose to lose a Lucky Number rather than being retired permanently, letting them rejoin the group at the start of the next adventure. Maybe their buddies bailed them out of jail, or their injuries were serious but not lethal. All Strikes are reset at the start of each adventure. If a character has three Strikes and no Lucky Number, they are still retired permanently.

Playing With Jokers:

As mentioned at the start of the manual, jokers can optionally be included in the card deck. In this case, they use the following rules:

• A joker can never be discarded from your hand. You cannot use it, and if you would normally lose it through Rolling Your Hand, you instead hang onto it.
• A joker has a value of 0 for determining turn order.