How To Play Summer Camp Slayers

Firebreathing Kittens

Hello everybody this is a special episode of the Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I am the Gamemaster for an upcoming episode where I’ll be using the mechanics from the tabletop role-play game, summer camp slayers. You can catch me as ‘Tord Unfrid’ playing a similar game that uses a different flavour of the same mechanics called Pirates of the Bone Blade in episode 266 of the Firebreathing Kittens Podcast. Summer camp slayers is a table top role-play game designed by Richard Woolcock from Zadmar Games using his universal Tricube game system and you can find this and more on DriveThruRPG. I will speak more on the TriCube system towards the end of episode here but for now let’s get into those game mechanics.

General Mechanics:

In summer camp slayers, you roll between one and three D6 6 sided dice, depending on your characters archetype and you compare your highest result against the difficulty set by the game master. For instance, you may roll two 6 sided dice and have a 3 and 5 on the dice the game master set the difficulty at five meaning you have one success. You start with 2D6 add a die to your roll if what you’re doing falls in line with your trait and you remove a die if what you’re doing falls outside the scope of your concept but we'll get into that more during the character creation section. The main thing to remember going forward is that together your trait and concept make up your characters archetype forming half of your character design, the other half of the character design comes from your perks and quirks.

Perks and Quirks (Archetype) Overview:

Speaking of perks and quirks, they allow you to influence the difficulty of the challenge you face. You can influence the difficulty of the task by expending one of your karma points to reduce the difficulty of the task by 1 if you can explain how your perk aids you in that moment. You can also decide to make the difficulty of the task harder before rolling, increasing it by 1, describing how your quirk negatively effected you. If you fail the task when using your quirk you get a karma back but if you succeed you can choose to regain a resolve instead if you'd like. If a player runs out of resolve they are typically removed from the scene and gain an affliction. Afflictions are described by the victor and are treated as temporary quirks for your player. A character with three affliction is retired from play, although they can be brought back if one of their afflictions is cured. Now that we've talked about how to decide the outcome of a challenge let's find out what happens if you succeed or fail.

Success/Failure:

Succeeding a task with one single die above or meeting the difficulty rating will result in a normal success, any additional successful die roll will be a exceptional success. Exceptional successes typical provide additional removed effort tokens or beneficial effects as decided by the game master. The same is true however for failures as well with the distinction being that you have to roll all 1’s on your dice for it to be a critical failure, this typically involves losing double the amount of resolve or additional negative effects as decided by the game master and player such as gaining an affliction. Some tasks are simple and only require a single success to complete them, there are however harder tasks and in these instances effort tokens will be used. A harder task can require anywhere from 2-4 successes or more depending on the situation to whittle down that encounters effort tokens.

Character Creation:

Now that we know how the game works, let’s talk about creating a character. In Summer Camp Slayers you select from a list of four different options during character creation, those four options as discussed earlier are Trait, Concept, Perk and Quirk. At first all the these four terms may sound the same however they do function differently from each other, let’s get into that.

Traits:

We’ll start with trait, in this game system a trait is always the same, regardless of the flavour of the system you’re playing. A trait is one of the following: Agile, Brawny or Crafty; the ABC’s of Tricube! Agile covers things like quickness, dexterity, reflexes, or stealth; they also roll 3d6 for ranged combat. Brawny covers things like strength, toughness, stamina or athletics; they also roll 3d6 for melee combat. Crafty covers things like charisma, intellect, willpower or perception; they also roll 3d6 for mental combat (magic, persuasion, intimidation). Unless something falls within your trait you will roll 2d6, if it does happen to fall within your trait however you get to roll 3d6 instead! For example. A brawny kid would roll 3D6 when trying to lift something heavy off their friends, but only 2D6 if they were trying to avoid getting pinned by the same object as it's falling as that would be an Agile roll.

Concepts:

Next let's talk about concepts, as it is a bit more of a loose idea and changes depending on the flavour of the game type and world you're playing in. The concepts provided for Summer Camp Slayers are Counselor, nurse, lifeguard, groundskeeper, cook, activity leader or kid. Your concept may provide you additional knowledge or information in interactions with NPC's but mechanically it is only used when you're doing something outside the scope of that concept. Let's put that into perspective, let's say you're a Crafty Kid who is a Bookworm and Cautious, if you were to try to impersonate a police officer to cover a story you had about trying to sneak out late at night to investigate the weird things happening in the woods that would most likely go against your concept as a kid as it would be unbelievable. When something falls outside of the scope of your concept you lose a die from your pool before you roll, making a challenge more difficult. This can be offset with your trait, for example if you were instead trying to hotwire a car it would still be unlikely to happen as you're a kid but more likely because of your crafty trait leaving you with the normal 2D6 to roll.

Perks:

Now that we have gone over what makes up your archetype, and the type of traits and concepts, let's move on to talking about how to influence the difficulty of the roll using perks and quirks and which of each exist in this game. Let's start with perks, as they give you the ability to spend your Karma points to reduce the difficulty of your roll making your chances of success better. The perks available in Summer Camp Slayers are Bookworm, occult insight, quick, perceptive, persuasive, advanced combat training, or supernatural ability. If you can describe how your perk aids you during a challenge you can expend 1 Karma to reduce the difficulty of the check by 1. For example, a player with the perk of persuasive might be trying to impersonate a police office and that character has the persuasive perk they could expend 1 Karma to reduce the difficulty of the check by 1. In addition when making group checks there may be times where your perk allows you to bypass a check altogether, doing so still requires 1 Karma however. For example, a character with a supernatural ability may be able to open a locked door with their powers but doing so would still require the expenditure of 1 Karma, if the character is out of Karma describe how their perk comes up short in this moment.

Quirks:

Quirks are things that define your character and may make you more pre-disposed to having a difficult time in certain situations. The Quirks available in Summer Camp Slayers are Hothead, prankster, cautious, show-off, suspicious, sarcastic, or haunted. You can use your Quirk to make the difficulty of any check harder by 1, if you fail you gain 1 Karma but if you succeed you can choose to regain 1 Karma or 1 Resolve, if you regain resolve describe how your success even when facing insurmountable odds emboldens your resolve.

Karma and Resolve:

Let's talk now about Karma and Resolve. Each player starts with three of each and can spend, lose and regain both throughout the game session. When you run out of Karma nothing bad happens to your character, you just aren't able to influence the difficulty of checks positively anymore. If you run out of resolve however you could be temporarily removed from the scene and at best gain an affliction; if not both. For example, if your character is trying to jump off a roof to a nearby tree and fails their check and you only have 1 resolve remaining, reducing you to 0, your player may go unconscious temporarily and when they awake have a 'concussed' affliction. In another case your character may be trying to like we said before impersonate a police officer and if they fail perhaps they gain the 'untrustworthy' affliction.

Afflictions:

Affliction can be temporary or permanent depending on the severity of the failure. For instance if we use the examples above the concussed affliction would be temporary while the 'untrustworthy' affliction would be a more permanent one. Permanent afflictions cant be turned into quirks when leveling up to take advantage of them to regain resolve instead of them just being a hindrance. For example turning the untrustworthy affliction into a quirk might allow you to lie easier in the future as your reputation fades but the ability to land a false truth sticks like glue.

Leveling Up:

Speaking of leveling up, when doing so in this system you typically choose a new perk or quirk each level and increase either your karma or resolve by 1 every other level. You can opt out of choosing a new perk or quirk and instead choose to turn a permanent affliction into a quirk upon leveling up.

Combat and Challenges:

Now that we know how to create our character and the mechanics of the game, let's talk about combat and challenges. Generally in combat the Game Master will go around the table asking each of the players their actions for their turn choosing the turn order based on what narratively makes the most sense. The players will each choose their action and the game master will set the difficulty and the trait of the action. For example, a person swinging a sword at a Goblin with 2 effort tokens would have to roll a Brawny 5 check, if they were to shoot it they would roll a Agile 5 check and if they were to use magic against it they would roll a Crafty 5 check. The player would take into account their Trait to see if they could add any dice to their 2D6 pool, your concept does not matter during combat as it is assumed each character is trained in some form of combat. The player has an opportunity to make the difficulty higher before the roll using their Quirk or make the roll easier after their roll using their Perk as they see fit. If they roll a 5 or better on one of the dice the attack lands and one effort token is removed from the goblin, if they have more than 1 dice meet or beat a 5 they would remove 2 effort tokens and effectively remove the goblin from combat. The GM will go around the table having each player take a turn until all enemy combatants are removed from combat. Challenges are non-combat events that come up during a game like talking to NPC's, sneaking, lockpicking etc. and work in a similar way with the distinction being that challenges take into account your Concept as well, remove a dice from your 2D6 pool if it is outside your scope. For example, a Brawny Groundskeeper trying to use a flamethrower against zombies would only roll 1D6 as they don't benefit from their Trait and burning the well kempt nature of the camp would go against their concept.

Spells:

Many fantasy, horror, and even science fiction settings describe characters with supernatural powers such as telekinesis, alchemy, psionics, etc. These arcane gifts can be easily represented as perks. A character with such a perk can do anything a trained person in the setting could achieve with

appropriate tools, as long as it thematically fits their type of magic. Spending karma allows the mage to perform even greater feats of magic, overcoming any challenge a professional could manage with specialized gear. Mages can choose three spells during character creation; these determine how and when they can use their magic. Each spell needs to have a name and a limitation—e.g., “fiery bolt (destructive),” “lightning shield (personal),” “illusionary disguise (ritualistic),” etc. You can create more potent spells by giving them additional limitations. This narrows their scope, and the GM should be more flexible when interpreting their effect. Perhaps your “invisibility sphere” is ritualistic and requires a focus, but can be used to conceal the entire party. New spells are learned during play, at the GM’s discretion—perhaps a wizard can learn from scrolls or spell books, or maybe the GM awards sorcerers a new spell each time they gain an advance.

For the players in my upcoming session, please level up twice. Each level up will allow you to choose either one additional perk or quirk, if there aren’t any on the list that appeal to you feel free to come up with your own. Additionally please choose either your Karma or Resolve and increase it by 1 to a total of 4.

Hopefully this information regarding the rules is helpful to my players as they build their character and try to understand the mechanics of this game system. For everyone listening, we encourage you to find the Tricube system and other variants of it like Summer Camp Slayers for yourselves, and play a game with friends. If you'd like to hear an example adventure, I'm looking forward to playing Summer Camp Slayers in an upcoming session. Thank you everyone for listening and take care.