The ten-minute rulebook
Learn Basic Roleplaying by playing with it.
Every widget on this page runs the same rules engine as Atlas itself, built from the 2023 rulebook. Page numbers point to the book.
CHAPTER 1
One roll to rule them all
Every skill is a percentage: your chance to succeed. Roll two ten-sided dice as 1–100 and roll your number or lower.
Roll very low for a special (⅕ of your skill) or a critical (1/20). Rolls of 96–00 always fail, and the very worst rolls are fumbles. (p109–110)
Easy tasks double your chance and difficult ones halve it. Good or bad conditions add or subtract 20 or 50. (p113–114)
Try it · Spot
Roll under 60 to succeed
Critical ≤ 3 · Special ≤ 12 · Fumble ≥ 98 (rulebook p110)
CHAPTER 2
Who you are, in numbers
Seven characteristics (STR, CON, SIZ, INT, POW, DEX, CHA) describe raw talent, usually 3–18 for people. Multiply by 5 for a quick roll: Luck is POW×5, Idea is INT×5. (p17–19)
From them come your hit points, your major wound level, your damage modifier and more. Drag the sliders. (p11, p20)
CHAPTER 3
When the world pushes back
Prying open a door, shrugging off poison, arm-wrestling a troll: compare two numbers on the resistance table.
It starts at 50% and moves 5% for every point of difference. Ten points apart, the result is automatic. (p110–112)
50 + 5 × (14 − 12) = 60
CHAPTER 4
Steel meets steel
In combat you roll to attack, and your foe rolls to parry or dodge, but only if your attack succeeded. The book’s attack and defense table settles it. (p127)
A critical hit does maximum damage and ignores armor. Specials add the weapon’s effect: impale, crush, bleed. Each extra defense in a round is −30%. (p125–130)
Special hit: damage plus weapon effect
- The parrying weapon takes 4 damage.
That’s the whole engine.
Everything else, from magic and chases to sanity and spaceships, builds on these ideas. Atlas handles the bookkeeping so your table can tell the story.