Gangs of Kahabro ttrpg will use the Year Zero Engine FTL, merged with some of the more popular parts of the Powered by ZWEIHANDER RPG game engine. Today, I wanted to show how it works and drifts away from its inspiration:
BASICS OF GAMEPLAY EXCERPT
The golden rule for Gangs of Kahabro is this: keep the game moving forward! If you forgot a specific rule, ignore it and look it up later. If a rule gets in the way of having fun, work together to create a house rule, personalizing it for your table.
How Gameplay Works
Gangs of Kahabro uses the Year Zero Engine FTL by Free League Publishing. This game uses an intuitive D6 dice pool system, which produces fast, meaningful results by removing most dice rolling and bookkeeping that doesn’t keep the action moving. Complexity is layered in slowly and can be easily ignored in favor of telling a compelling story.
Whenever you and some friends sit down to play the game, it’s called a session. Sessions tend to last from 1 to 4 hours. You’ll need anywhere from two to six friends to play, but it can also be played one-on-one.
Your player characters (knaves hereafter) are the focus of the story. The rules are designed to present you with meaningful choices. This is a deadly tabletop RPG, with conflict only happening at decisive moments. Even the most experienced players could face dangers that can quickly overwhelm them. Use means other than violence when possible.
When you play a session, you’ll play as a “guild” (in-world parlance for a gang) of enterprising knaves who’ll go on undertakings. It’s a gritty tale driven by medieval street-level warfare and otherworldly horror. An undertaking typically takes three sessions or more to complete. Several interconnected undertakings make up a campaign.
Sessions are broken down into scenes. Scene by scene, you’ll be in narrative time employing morally questionable decision-making and growing the influence of your guild. You’ll negotiate tense situations, engage in chases, explore the city, participate in heart-pumping vehicle races, and get into dust-ups with rival guilds and creatures. You’ll also participate in a “zoomed out” mode of gameplay, where you’ll invest the spoils of your criminality into a home for your guild: your rookery. Finally, your infamy will grow as you lay claim to new territories, laying claim to new rookeries, with the boroughs paying you in Tribute.
A scene uses a free-flowing back-and-forth form of storytelling called narrative time. Interactions within Kahabro (the sprawling city your knaves live in) can transpire over hours, days, or weeks in-game (time inside the game). Time moves in flux with the story, sometimes moment-by-moment, other times fast-forwarded and even backward as needed.
Every scene will include one or more challenges guided by a storyteller/rules referee called the Guild Master (GM hereafter). Your sessions move in a free-flowing conversation, oftentimes scene-by-scene like a television show. And whenever a critical situation arises with uncertain outcomes, the GM will have you use dice to determine what happens.
Unlike board games, the only “win” condition is to have a good time. Together, you’ll go on perilous undertakings. Your knaves will engage in dust-ups with rival guilds, undergo personal trials, and face inhuman enemies. Your guild may meet a gruesome end. But the stories you tell and the memories you make allow everyone to win.
Playing A Guild of Knaves
Gangs of Kahabro is about you. Your knaves are always at the center of the story, and it’s your job to immerse yourself into that role. You’ll role-play as if you are them: acting, feeling, and thinking like your knave. Their means and views may be arguably (and criminally) different than yours, but they are still a person with desires, feelings, and hopes. At the end of this chapter, we’ve provided you with the vernacular of playing a knave called The Chant.
What to Expect
Gameplay tends to work like this:
Step 1: The GM sets the scene by describing what your knaves see and experience. A scene is drawn from a written undertaking or campaign but may also be a story of their devising. It’ll play towards your knave’s five senses and present story hooks for them to follow up on.
Step 2: You will interact with other players in the scene, saying how your knave reacts to what they discover. In a free-flowing conversation, you’ll ask the GM questions about the world and its people. It’s best if everyone takes turns around the game table so that the GM can control the flow of information.
Step 3: The GM describes how the world reacts to your choices and narrates the outcome. Every knave is an individual with competing interests. A GM will sometimes ask you to talk specifically about what your knave is doing and how they feel. Other times, they will ask the group how the guild will proceed.
Step 4: If a scene erupts into a fight, you’ll use Chapter X: Fight Scenes to drive the drama. Using your knave’s abilities from their criminal record (found in the Appendix), the GM pits you against foes mundane and terrifying. A fight always ends in retreat, surrender, or death.
Step 5: Scenes don’t always have to culminate in a fight scene, but when other kinds of scenes come to a close, the GM moves players back to the first step, and so on. Fluidity is key, so these steps should change and flow as needed with the story.
Narrating & Acting
Some players act out their actions using improv in the first person. Others prefer to narrate their knave’s actions, explaining their actions in the third person. Mix these styles up as needed:
- Sarah (as Mum), Acting: With her ritual knife in hand, I say, “Hey sod, you ain’t gotta explain it, we’d been robbin’ Farasemi since the slave ships!”
Sarah (as Mum), Narrating: Mum draws her knife and says something menacingly lyrical that will scare the bluebloods into dropping their purses!
Players Can Set Scenes
With GM approval, players can set scenes to flesh out their knave’s backstory. These scenes can take place in the present or as a flashback:
- Cassie (as Honey Tart): I want to set a scene that happened in the past, where she could have extracted a damnable secret from Engelbert, the Legate agent. I want it to give us the upper hand in an upcoming negotiation.
GM: Yep! Okay, so we cut away to her and the agent. They’re in a pleasure dome, and Engelbert begins sharing pillow secrets with you. Honey Tart is in control of the situation, what would you suggest happens in this scene?
Pause A Scene
This book will teach you how to tell engaging, mature, and nuanced stories. Consent and agreement are vital to collaborative storytelling. To achieve that, everyone must have a positive gaming experience. But that doesn’t mean you must avoid visceral scenes of criminality and horror.
If uncomfortable content comes up, you can pause the scene by crossing your hands in front of your face, like an “X.” All action stops so that you can speak aloud (or write it on a piece of paper for the GM to read privately) the discomforting content. You never have to provide reasoning why it makes you feel that way. The GM will then recalibrate the scene to adjust or avoid the content.
Special D6 Dice
You only need two kinds of dice to play Gangs of Kahabro:
Base Dice (D6): You’ll roll a handful of D6 at a time, generating results from 1 to 6. Rolling a face ‘6’ is good, rolling a face ‘1’ is bad, and all other numbers are inconsequential. You’ll need ten dice of a matching color to represent Base Dice. We recommend black D6 dice.
Luck Dice (D6): Along with Base Dice, you’ll sometimes roll a handful of D6 Luck Dice at a time, generating results from 1 to 6. Rolling a face ‘6’ is good, rolling a face ‘1’ is bad, and all other numbers are inconsequential. You’ll need ten dice of a matching color to represent Luck Dice. We recommend yellow D6 dice.
D6, D66 & D666 (ranges): There are rare moments when you will be called upon to roll from a range of results in a table. In these cases, D6 is easy. For D66, the first D6 is the tens value, and the second D6 is the ones value (such as a face “5” and face “1” is 51%. The same goes for D666, but your first D6 is the hundreds value, the second D6 the tens value, and the third D6 the ones value (such as face “3”, face “6”, and face “2” is 362%). Simply use a combination of Base & Luck Dice to represent percentiles.
Rolling Skill Tests
Sooner or later, a decisive situation will arise, a point of no return that a conversation alone cannot resolve. Then it’s time to break out the dice to roll a Skill Test! Simply describe an action you want to take, and the GM will tell you which Skill to Test. Ranks in a Skill, combined with ranks in its related Attribute, determines what dice to roll:
Step 1: State an action your knave will take, and the GM will tell you to roll a Test using one of your Skills. Your Skills generally have a rank of 0 to 3. Pick up a number of Base Dice equal to your Skill Ranks:
In the middle of a dust-up, Will’s knave Scabs wants to quickly cobble together a makeshift bomb using contraband gunpowder. The GM tells him to make a Skulduggery Test. Scabs has 2 ranks in Skulduggery. Will then picks up 2 Base Dice.
Step 2: Find the Attribute related to the Skill. Attributes represent your raw mental, physical, and spiritual capabilities. Your Attributes generally have 2 to 5 ranks. Pick up a number of Base Dice equal to your Attribute Ranks:
Skulduggery is tied to Agility, which Scabs has 5 ranks in. Will then picks up 5 Base Dice.
Step 3: Add any Luck Dice. Knaves thrive in dangerous situations, and the more dangerous things are, the more effective they become. A knave can have anywhere from 0 to 10 Luck Dice. The more you have, the better chance you have at Succeeding in Skill Tests, but the chances increase for your luck to run out as the Nightfather comes to collect His due. The sum of these is calculated into your dice pool:
Scabs got 2 dice from Skulduggery and 5 dice from Agility. He doesn’t have the benefit of Luck Dice, so Will rolls 7 Base Dice all at once.
Step 4: To succeed with your action, you need only roll but one face ‘6’ on your dice. A six is called a Success. Let the GM know what your knave did and the effects of it:
Will rolls all his dice, but none came up with a face “6” for a Success. Therefore, Scabs fails at his Skill Test!
GM Tip: Adjusting Difficulty
Normally, you won’t assess how difficult a Skill Test is. But sometimes, it makes sense to underscore external factors either help or hinder an action (such as a player narratively describing what they want to do that adds to the fun around the game table). Award anywhere from +1 to +3 Base Dice for more favorable conditions or penalize the Test from -1 to -3 Base Dice for more challenging situations (to a minimum of 1 Base Die). Alternatively, you may ask a player to generate 1 to 3 total Successes to succeed in their actions.
Push Your Luck: Re-roll
Knaves live dangerously but pay their respects to the Nightfather, the god of luck and lies. Call out to him in desperate moments, and fortune strikes. But the Nightfather also desires a counterbalance. Invoke his name too often, and sooner or later, your luck will run out. Immediately after making a Skill Test, you can choose to Push the test but once. Grab one Luck Die, and re-roll it with all your Base Dice that wasn’t a face “6”. You must accept the results of the re-roll.
You can continue Pushing new Skill Tests, accumulating more Luck Dice. Luck Dice persist throughout the session for future dice rolls. However, you can never have more than ten total Luck Dice:
- Will failed his first roll, so he decides to Push his Skulduggery Test. Grabbing the same 7 Base Dice as before, he also puts one Luck Die in his hand. Rolling all his dice, Will comes up with 2 Successes on Base Dice, but his Luck Die comes up as face”6”. Will gets 3 Successes!
Later on, Will need to make a Melee Test, but generates no Successes. He decides to Push, grabbing his original one Luck Die and adds another Luck Dice in his hand. He now has two Luck Dice to roll with his Base Dice.
Finally, Will needs to make a Skulduggery Test but generates no Successes. He decides to Push, grabbing his original two Luck Dice and adds another Luck Die to his hand He now has three Luck Dice to roll with his Base Dice. This time, he generates two face “1s” on his Luck Dice. His luck has run out!
When Your Luck Runs Out
When you Push a Skill Test, and if one or more Luck Dice come up face “1”, you immediately discard all Luck Dice, restarting at zero. In addition, the GM immediately gains one Misfortune Coin. GM’s Misfortune is covered later in the chapter. You can gain up to ten total Luck Dice but can continue Pushing Skill Tests. You’ll reset your Luck Dice to zero in three cases:
- At the end of a session.
After your knave sleeps in any place that isn’t their rookery.
You Push your roll and generate at least one face “1” on a Luck Dice.
Misfortune Coins
All are bound to the Nightfather’s wheel, turning treacherously as blind chance and dumb luck favor the foolhardy and brave alike.
Whenever a player Pushes a Skill Test and one or more Luck Dice land on face “1”, the GM gains one Misfortune Coin. Misfortune Coins are a form of dramatic currency to put obstacles in front of knaves or to help NPCs. They should be used only at suspenseful moments. If used too often, it erodes trust between players and the GM.
Misfortune Coins should be physically represented at the table (coins, candies, or tokens) and put out in the open for every player to see. Watching the pool grow becomes an omen that something bad will happen if they continue pressing their luck. There isn’t a cap to how many Misfortune Coins a GM can accrue during a session; that’s entirely up to how often the players Push! Here are a few examples of how Misfortune Coins can be spent:
- Avoid Damage: The GM has an NPC altogether avoid Damage once a fight scene.
Choose Action: The GM can choose what a threat does on its Turn instead of rolling on its AI table.
Push a Skill Test. A foe can Push a Skill Test once but doesn’t generate Misfortune Coins.
Misfortune Strikes. A knave must remove one Base Die from their Skill Test.
Manifestation. When a knave uses an Invocation, the GM will roll D66 on the Manifestation Table.
Misplace Item: In a crucial moment, an important trapping a knave needed (one that isn’t story-dependent) is lost.
Panic Ensues: After a momentous event, a knave suffers from some form of Panic. The GM will roll D66 on the Panic Table to tell you what happens.
Seize the Initiative: The GM can move one foe to the top of the Initiative Ladder.
Misfortune Coins are discarded at the end of the session and built once again during the next session.
We're covering this and other parts of the world and system over at https://zweihander.games
