Zi’Dara
Welcome to Zi’Dara
Note
What you need to play. Two to six players and a GM. Polyhedral dice (d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12), a few d2s (a coin works), and three d20s for The Oracle, or one d20 rolled three times. A grid map helps, but you don’t need one. Paper and pencils. A session runs two to four hours.
I’m Mo. I run Dice Goblin, a game store in Auckland, and I made this game.
I like characters who kick ass and take names. So I built a game about competent people who stack the odds in their favour. Being good at one thing helps you borrow from another, and before you know it you’re standing toe to toe with the best in the room.
Every rule in here has been through real games at a real table. Plenty of rules got thrown out along the way, and what you’re holding is the stuff that survived.
Zi’Dara starts with Zi, the Sumerian word for soul. That’s a nod to where this game started.
If you’ve never played a roleplaying game
Here’s the short version. You and a few friends tell a story together. One of you is the GM, who plays the world: the places, the people and the trouble. Everyone else plays one character each, and together they’re a crew that’s good at what it does. The GM sets up a situation, you say what your character does, and when it’s not certain whether it works, you roll dice to find out.
Nobody wins or loses the way they would in a board game. A session runs a few hours, and a run of sessions with the same crew is a campaign.
Coming from another roleplaying game?
You’ll pick it up fast, but a few things work differently. You pick two archetypes, like Guardian or Shadow, and each one has something only it can do. Then you name each one with a Title that says who you are, like the best cat burglar in the city for a Shadow. Everything else your character can do is a permission written on one of your Titles, so your Titles and permissions say what you’re actually good at, and there’s no skill list. You don’t roll a d20 to see if it works either. Your die grows out of those, and your sheet has it counted before you sit down. Most threats don’t have hit points. They have tags, and every win strips one, though the big ones have Tough, which works like hit points. There’s no initiative. The GM shows you everything that’s coming first, then everyone takes one action, in any order. If you want a proper side-by-side, there’s a free guide called Crossing Over.
What it looks like at the table
Don’t worry about the words yet. The Core and Conflict explain all of them.
ExampleOver the wall
GM: Vesk, you’re halfway over the manor wall. The gate guard hasn’t seen you yet, but his dog’s spotted Bram at the gate, and he’s reaching for the bell rope. That’s a d6 at the bell, and if it lands, the whole house wakes up. Bram, the dog’s already coming for you. That’s a d8 at your Armour.
Vesk: He’s not ringing that bell. I drop off the wall onto him from behind and drag him away from the rope. That’s my Sneak: my first Title, move unseen and Silent Step, with the action, 4 steps. My grappling line’s on my Move, so I’ll pay an Aura to bring it in and swing down on it. That’s 5 steps, a d10, on the bell.
GM: Fair enough. Roll his d6 as well.
Vesk: 10 on the d10. That’s a top face, so I get my Aura straight back. His d6 is a 5.
GM: You land on him before his hand’s on the rope. Nobody’s heard a thing.
Bram: I’m getting the gate open. The dog can have a go at my plate.
At the end of the round the dog’s d8 rolls a 7 against Bram’s Armour, a d6, which rolls a 3. It lands.
GM: It gets its teeth into your arm. Take a Hurt.
Bram: Can it get the plate instead? Step my Armour down.
GM: Fair. Your Armour’s a d4 now.
What’s in this book
This book is the whole game. You don’t need anything else.
There are thirty chapters. The first thirteen teach you to play. The next six are about playing together over a campaign. The next five are for the GM. The last six are the world: how to build your own, a ready-made one called the Steeplands, five frames to choose a different world from, twenty places ready to drop in, a threat builder and a bestiary. After that come the appendices, a glossary and an index.
There are worked examples all the way through: a fight on the page and a round on the grid, a social duel, a chase, a journey, a dig under a burned library, a murder, a week of downtime, one character’s whole career, a crew’s whole career, and a four-session campaign. If you want to play tonight, Title Ideas and the Crew has twenty-nine Title ideas to build from in ten minutes, roles and schools of magic, each with the archetypes it suits, and six ready-made characters. All seventeen archetypes are in The Archetypes.
Where to start
If you’re a player, read The Core, Building Your Character and Conflict, plus your own two archetypes in The Archetypes and the Movement and Range section of Tactical Play. That’s enough to sit down and play tonight. Come back for the rest of Tactical Play when you want to get good at it.
If you’re the GM, read the lot, in order. Everyone skips The Party Sheet, so don’t. Running the Game is the chapter you’ll keep coming back to.
If you’re all new to Zi’Dara, start with the free starter adventure, Ironjaw. It teaches the whole table the game while you play it, and the GM only needs to read it through once.
If you’ve been away for a while, read The Core again, skim the Quick Reference at the back, then jump back into whatever chapter you were up to.
Finding things
On the website, search finds anything in the book. At the very back there’s a glossary with every rule term in one line, and an index that tells you where each one lives.
A word on the rules
Every rule in here is a rule, but a rule’s only worth keeping if it makes your table better. If one gets in the way, play a session without it. If the game’s better for it, bin it. It’s your table.