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Introduction

Welcome to Heroes & Monsters™, a fantasy roleplaying game with a set of simple rules and an old school mentality, meant to capture the feel of the early roleplaying games, but with more modern and less restrictive rules. Heroes & Monsters™ was created with the intention of being used with any campaign setting—preferably one of the many classic settings from the early days of roleplaying—but it can be used in any way you want, really.

Use for your own created world, use it in a published campaign setting, use it in a sandbox setting, where you and your friends create the world as you go along. It’s all fine.

The Basics

Heroes & Monsters™ is a role playing game set in a fantasy world of Dwarfs, demons, dragons and hordes of gold coins and magic swords.

Heroes & Monsters™ is a “pen & paper” game that requires a group of players to sit around a table with pencils, pieces of paper and dice and interact with one another to make things happen.

One of the players is declared the Game Master, or (GM) and has the task of running the game.

The other players take on the roles of fantasy characters—wizards, warriors, etc.—delving into dungeons in search of treasure.

Most games have four to six players, but more or fewer players is possible.

About Role-Playing

You could say that a roleplaying game consists of two ingredients: one is the world itself, full of places to visit and creatures to meet; the other ingredient is the rules which set the framework for what you can and cannot do within the game world and determines the outcome of events.

When you play a roleplaying game, you play in a group together with your friends, and the goal is to have fun, plain and simple. You don’t compete against each other; instead you work together, experiencing adventures and developing your characters.

One person in the group take on the role of the Game Master—the referee of the game, and they don’t create any player characters. Instead they act as the rules referee and the story teller of the game, presenting the world to the players and filling it with inhabitants for the players to interact with and obstacles for the players to overcome. But the mutual story, the adventure experience, is created by both the Game Master and the players together.

Players

When you play a roleplaying game, everyone (except the Game Master) has their own character, an alter ego through which the player acts in the game world. The player decides the actions of their character and rolls a die to see if the action succeeds or not.

The Character

When you create a character, you do it by consulting this site and by using a character sheet to write down the results of your choices. The character sheet holds information about your character, like your character’s name, abilities, goals, equipment, previous experience, etc. When your character learns something new, buys new equipment or receives a reward, you simply write it down on your character sheet.

The Game Master

The Game Master (GM), is simply put, the referee of the game, the one who envisions and describes the game world to the other players and puts the player character to test when they try to reach their goals. Like a real-time director, Game Masters should be prepared to improvise when the player characters do something unexpected, but also sometimes gently help the players along the way – so that the mutual story will be as exciting and fun as possible.

Non-player Characters

Those individuals and creatures that the player characters meet during play are called non-player characters (Npcs) and are controlled by the Game Master.

As mentioned earlier, the Game Master doesn’t roll any dice to see if the Npcs succeed with their actions, instead they have fixed values that modify the dice rolls of the player characters.

Adventures

Even if the players have a big impact on what happens during an adventure, the Game Master has the utmost responsibility for the story. It’s mainly the Game Master who makes the preparations before the session, either by creating their own adventure or reading an adventure created by someone else.

In Adventures there are tips and advice on how to create adventures that are both exciting and fun for everyone, players and Game Masters alike.

What You Need

There are a few things that you need in order to play this game:

Dice: You need several different polyhedral dice with four, six, eight, ten, twelve and twenty sides (called d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20 for short).

Paper: You’ll need paper for taking notes, drawing maps and diagrams etc. to help describe what is going on during the game.

You can also find a character sheet at the back of the book which you will need to print out for each player character.

Time, some friends and imagination: You need to find some friends willing to play the game and you need time, usually three to four hours worth of game time for a game session.

And last, but not least, you and your friends need imagination—and lots of it—as the game takes place in the minds of the players and the Game Master.

The Dice

Heroes & Monsters™ uses several different kinds of dice, and we abbreviate them according to how many sides they have. So, the four-sided die is called a d4, and if we’re telling you to roll 3 of them, we say to roll 3d4. The six-sided die is a d6, the eight-sided die is a d8, the ten-sided die is a d10, the twelve-sided die is a d12, and the twenty-sided die is a d20. There is no die with 100 sides—what you do to roll a d100 is to roll two ten-sided dice, treating the first roll as the “tens” and the second roll as the “ones.” If you were to roll a 7 and then a 3, for example, the result would be read as “73”. A roll of 0 and 0 means a result of “100.”

The Core Mechanic

Everything a character might possibly attempt that could result in failure is resolved by testing attribute stats, in order to successfully test a stat—a player must roll below it on a d20.

Monsters don’t make tests—a character must avoid their attacks by making a test, the only time a monster would roll is for damage.

Advantage & Disadvantage

A GM may decide that a particular course of action or task has a higher or lower chance of success.

They will ask a player to roll an additional d20 when making a test—with Advantage the lower result is used and with Disadvantage, the higher.

Characters

Each player takes the role of a fantastic character, and through that character explores the world and attempts to overcome the challenges created and adjudicated by the Game Master. Creating a new character involves rolling some dice to determine the character’s basic attributes, picking a character race and using the character’s game money to buy equipment.

If you’re the Game Master, you’ve got a bit more preparation to do, which is covered later in the rules. For now, let’s look at creating a Heroes & Monsters™ character.

Character Creation Steps

1. 1. Determine your Stats.
2. 2. Choose Alignment.
3. 3. Choose a Class (and Race).
4. 4. Buy Equipment.
5. 5. Determine the final details (background, appearance, personality, alignment, motivations and goals).
6. 6. Start playing!

Stats

The basic Stats are numbers which represent the Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma of the character.

The Stats are rated in values from 7 to 15, where 7 is the lowest and 15 is the highest. Start with a score of 7 in the Stats and you have a pool of 30 points. Assign points to each of the six Stats. No Stat may start higher than 15.

Each Class makes particular use of a number of the stats, so if you wish to carefully construct your character, you may wish to check the classes to see how they are used.

Strength (STR)

Strength is a measure of your physical strength and applies to direct physical task, such as lifting, pushing or dragging heavy objects, climbing, jumping, and for attacking someone in melee combat. Strength also determines how much equipment you can carry without being encumbered and for resisting physical harm that cannot be dodged.

Dexterity (DEX)

Dexterity is a combination of coordination and quickness. Dexterity applies to coordination tasks, such as hiding, sneaking, manipulating fine objects, operating vehicles and for attacking someone with a ranged weapon. Dexterity also determines your Initiative in combat and resisting physical harm that can be dodged.

Constitution (CON)

Constitution is the health and endurance of the character. Constitution applies to health tasks, such as wilderness survival and resisting disease, poison and death.

Intelligence (INT)

Intelligence represents IQ, reasoning, and the ability to solve puzzles or understand difficult concepts. Intelligence applies to mental tasks, such as memory and problem-solving, casting Magic-User spells, and for resisting spells and magical devices.

Wisdom (WIS)

Wisdom determines a character’s insight, perception, willpower and good judgment. Wisdom applies to intuitive tasks, such as perception and resisting deception, detecting illusions and casting Clerical spells.

Charisma (CHA)

A highly charismatic character has a better chance to talk his way out of trouble. Charisma applies to social tasks, such as persuasion and guile, and resisting Charming effects.

Alignment

All sapient creatures in Heroes & Monsters have an Alignment.

This represents the philosophical outlook of the creature. There are two opposing philosophical alignments that a creature might have: Order, or Chaos.

Creatures aligned with Order, usually referred to as “Lawful” creatures, enjoy stability, routine, and predictability. They are likely to live in large cities with well-defined social mores and caste, class systems or other forms of social stratification where everyone knows their place and there is little social mobility.

Such societies can be benevolent and protective or oppressive and tyrannical in nature, but in either case one’s position in society and feeling as if one belongs to a group are often seen as more important than individuality.

Creatures aligned with Chaos, usually referred to as “Chaotic” creatures, are quite the opposite. They prefer novelty and change to stodgy routine, and are more likely to live in small family groups or clans than in cities. Position and respect in such groups is often very changeable and linked to individual traits such as strength or honor. Chaotic societies can be bastions of altruism, freedom and individuality or brutal dog-eat-dog places where only the strongest survive.

Many creatures don’t wholly embrace either of these philosophies, preferring something in-between the two. These creatures are usually simply referred to as “Neutral”.

The constant struggle between Order and Chaos is the struggle between civilization and barbarism and the balance swings back and forth as empires rise and fall. This struggle is also an inherent part of the way magic works, and there are magical effects and spells that vary depending on whether the alignments of their caster and target match.

A character’s alignment may make them more susceptible to certain magical effects.