Core Rulebook by Handiwork Games
London. Winter. 1963. It is a year since the Cold War went hot. This was not just a nuclear war, as darker weapons with their roots in World War II’s suffering and fringe science were deployed. Survival and re-building are all that matter now. But human nature and the breakdown of society mean that everyone has their own ambitions. Into this maelstrom steps a motley band of women and men tasked with the jobs too dirty or dangerous for anyone else. They have to deal with relationships, loves, hatred, and hidden agendas in a collapsing, ravaged, horror-strewn Britain.
Revised and reimagined from the first edition that appeared in 2008, Hot War keeps everything great about this critically acclaimed RPG while bringing fresh ideas to the texts and the mechanics.
When conflicts arise in the game, players create pools of ten-sided dice from attributes, traits, tools, hidden agendas, and relationships.
Control (the GM) assembles a pool of dice from various thematic groups (external enemies, internal enemies, monsters, London, and Breakdown) to provide opposition.
Control and the players roll their dice, and for each die that’s higher than an opposing die, that side gains 1 “success”. The side with the most successes wins, and can spend those successes to generate consequences that alter the characters, the story, and Control’s dice groups.
Players and Control will consistently be making taut, meaningful, and challenging decisions with their dice as the game progresses and tension rises.
The game mechanics reinforce the key themes of the setting: in Hot War the nuclear destruction of society is ever present in the form of ‘Breakdown’ and Control can use this to make the characters’ lives increasingly difficult.
Hot War Second Edition is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.
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Voices From The Pulpit 