Roads & Roots

Roads & Roots is a universal role-playing game. It has no setting of its own: it works for fantasy and science fiction, horror and the present day. The rules are few, and they have a single purpose: to support the story, not to replace it.

The roads are the adventures your characters travel; the roots are their past, uncovered one piece at a time as the roads bring it to light.

How it plays

• 2d6 against a threshold. Roll two dice and add your relevant Traits. Beat the threshold by 1, 2 or 3+ for a partial, full or exceptional success. A 2 or 3 on the dice is always a critical failure.
• Characters made of Traits. There are no attributes and no stats. A Trait can be a skill, a physical feature or a quirk of mind, and the situation decides whether it helps or hinders.
• Destiny Points. Spend them to push a roll or to reroll fate.
• Narrative Conditions instead of hit points. Wounded, Exhausted, Terrified, Poisoned tell you how a character is doing in words, not numbers.
• One structure for every contest. Duels, chases, interrogations and negotiations all run on the same rounds.
• Growth by shared proposal. New Traits come from training or from "retro-discovery" of the character's past.

What's inside

• Complete rules in 9 chapters
• A full worked example of play: four scenes with combat, a chase and a clash of wills
• Rules summary and printable character sheet
• Bookmarked PDF with clickable table of contents
• English (57 pp.) and Italian (56 pp.) editions

All you need: two six-sided dice, a character sheet and some friends.

Licence

The text is released under CC BY-NC 4.0. You can share it, adapt it and create compatible content, as long as you credit the author and don't use it commercially. Illustrations and logo are not covered by the licence.

🇮🇹 Italiano

Roads & Roots è un gioco di ruolo narrativo universale: poche regole, 2d6, Tratti al posto delle caratteristiche, Punti Destino e Condizioni Narrative al posto dei punti ferita. Funziona per il fantasy come per la fantascienza, l'horror o il presente. Il download include il regolamento completo in italiano e in inglese e le schede del personaggio stampabili.

Game design by Giulio Neri. Text written with AI assistance; illustrations created with AI tools. www.roadsroots.com · gneribgames@gmail.com