Planetary Tales: Science Fantasy Role-Playing Game

Planetary Tales is a science fantasy roleplaying game inspired by the planetary romance tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard in turn of the century pulps such as Argosy, Planet Stories, and Weird Tales. Additionally, the posthumous barbarian fiction novel Warrior of the Altaii by Robert Jordan provided further inspiration and reference material. In these high adventure “sword and planet” stories, the protagonists are mysteriously transported to alien worlds, meet unlikely allies, and find danger lurking in every corner.

One player takes on the role of the Narrator, creating a familiar yet alien world, the humanoid people that inhabit it, and the threats that they face. The remaining players take the role of Travelers, humans who have gone on a magic carpet ride (figuratively or literally) to this strange new world and decide to answer the call to adventure.

Planetary Tales is played using one to three twelve-sided dice per player, referred to as the d12. The Narrator sets the scene and presents the Travelers with a challenge that must be overcome in order to move forward. Challenges have a Difficulty rating and use a Target Number (TN) ranging from 11 to 1 that the players must roll equal to or under to continue with their journey. In order to do so,  Travelers have 3 options to help them succeed:

1. Experiences from their former life on Earth such as their Background, Upbringing, or a even a firmly held Conviction to reduce the Difficulty of a challenge, increasing the TN to roll under by 2.
2. Talents which are listed underneath their Attributes and allow them to roll an extra d12, keeping the lowest result. These cover physical, mental, and social categories and are equivalent to skills.
3. Effort, a temporary sacrifice of points from their Attributes pools, which allows them to divide their d12 roll, referred to as Div#. Starting at 2 points of Effort for Div2, 1 more point for Div3, 1 more to reach Div4, and then 2 final points to reach Div6. In total, a Traveler can spend 6 points of Effort to increase their chance at success!

I decided to publish Planetary Tales for PocketQuest 2023 for the exact same reason as Camp Chivalry last year, it seemed fun! I hope you enjoy playing it!