Vic’s arm swung before she realized what she was doing. The silver blade dug deep into the side of the dry-one’s skull, peeling the parchment-like skin off the bone.

The dry-one shrieked, stepping backwards as the clawed hands flailed at Vic’s skin. She yanked the dagger free, ducking under the clawing limbs as she drove the knife towards the monster’s chest.

The corpse lurched aside again, the silver knife gouging a chunk out of its chest. Dry cloth and thin leather flapped around Vic’s ears and face as the glowing blue flames licked her face.

“Victoria, it must be you. I wish I could say it was a pleasure.”

Vic shoved the corpse hard, pushing herself away from the teeth and claws. She rolled back on the ground before coming up into a crouch, knife at the ready. Her heart was beating like mad, her conscious mind was in a panic. How could he be here?

“Here’s the last of it,” Petra grunted as she set the large sack of salt on the bar.

Vic glanced up as she finished filling her last casing. “Good. That’ll be plenty. You sure you don’t mind?”

“Not getting much use for it now,” she shrugged. “And no one’s comin’ in again if you don’t lick this problem right quick.”

Vic sealed the cartridge with a wad of paper. “Well, I ain’t goin’ to promise I’ll win. Never fought a dry-one before.”

“What’s that?”

Vic sighed as she slipped two prepared cartridges into Petra’s shotgun. “The deserts, the windy places of the Borderlands…they do something to the dead, but they can do something to the living too. You get thirsty, even if you have water. You start losing things; your self, your skin, your thoughts…eventually, all that’s left is hate.”

This is going to be a fluffy post, because my brain decided to ask a question that I needed to answer: Is it possible to do a different Powered by the Apocalypse die-roll system that has similar results?

The standard PbtA roll is 2d6 plus a bonus, such as a skill or stat. If the total of these dice and bonus is 7 to 9, you’ve rolled 1 hit. If the total is 10 or greater, you’ve rolled 2 hits. Moves have different results depending on how many hits you score, if any.

Ironsworn is a PbtA game that uses a different method of figuring out how many hits you score. Instead of having three “levels” of hits (2-6, 7-9, and 10+, for 0, 1, and 2 hits, respectively), you roll 2d10 and 1d6. You add your skill or stat bonus to the d6, and you gain 0, 1, or 2 hits depending on whether your result is greater than 0, 1, or 2 of the d10s.

Lakeside was a quiet town; only a few families, fewer children. Times were generally hard for the town, but they had always been so. The eldest Hunters had never known Lakeside to be full of anything but struggle and hard living, even before Old Splitfoot had staked his claim. The hard life had made the people of Lakeside wary, but through determined stubbornness, Lakeside had survived even in the Borderlands.

They weren’t the only town that survived — Boone’s Rest and Prudence both managed to scrape together a living, and Cloudy Vale was almost thriving — but the price had been high; high enough that Cloudy Vale was still paying, and paying hard. Lakeside was not only proof that survival was possible, but without making unwise deals.

The town had one tavern, and it wasn’t a good one. Lakeside couldn’t afford to stock their larders with food or drink from other towns, and the local still was the only source of moonshine. The owner of the tavern, Petra, tried her best to keep the barrels stocked, but she could only do so much.

Nevertheless, Vic knew better than most that every little bit helped, so she pushed the tavern doors open on their rusty hinges.

The tavern was empty. Dust covered the tables.

There were few people in the world who remembered the Borderlands before Old Splitfoot staked his claim: legends of forests free of monsters, deserts without the wailing dead, and plains full of fresh water and dancing deer, sleeping field-mice and singing birds.

The true telling of it was kept by the Grand Order of Monster Hunters in books and journals held as sacred, to be protected above all else. It was a holy memory — there was a time before Old Splitfoot.

Now, the plains were dangerous.

The worst danger of the plains was their lure of ease. The plains weren’t the hungry earth of the swamps nor the treacherous cliffs of the mountains. The plains could seduce even the wisest and most experienced into lowering their guard just long enough to become the hunted instead of the hunter.

For Vic, such feelings were lies. There was no peace and quiet in the Borderlands. Silence was the sound of stalking, gentle breezes the same as a predator’s breath. The peace of the plains was the allure of a fly-trap ready to snap closed.

She sat quietly, staring over the cold and empty expanse. Even without her training, these plains were unnaturally quiet. Even in the harshest lands there were sounds of a twisted nature; birds howled over still winds while emaciated deer and coyotes picked through rattling twigs. There was life, of a sort, among the dead.

Do you know the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken?

Of course you do. It’s one of his most famous. Everyone knows at least the last three lines:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

I have heard multiple stories about the writing of this poem. Generally it is agreed that it was written as a bit of a joke, poking fun at an indecisive friend. The entire poem, in defiance of the last three lines, is actually a bit of irony; specifically about how his friend would always regret taking the taken path and not the other.

The drawing room only had two windows, and both of them were still intact. The rest of the room was bookshelves and fancy statuary, fitting for a high-class lady and sir to entertain their guests. Vic closed the room’s doors and forced a chair under the handle. There. They were as safe as they could be, for the moment.

The moment didn’t last long.

Only a few minutes after she had laid the man out on the threadbare lounge and seated herself on a ragged chair, a deep thudding sound tickled her ear.

Damn. Gripping her rifle, she moved to the windows. Leaning her back against the wall, she carefully tilted her head to peak out and see what was making the sound.

She couldn’t see anything. A fog was crawling up from the south and already starting to cover the ground in its white glow. The sullen throb was following the mist, an ominous heartbeat, slow and steady.

Vic licked her teeth. The building wasn’t a terrible place to fortify, but it could also trap. If she left the house, she could engage the monster — whatever it was — in the open, but that too could be a double-edged knife. If she could only see what the monster was, then she could…

Her eye fell to her unconscious companion. Damn, damn. If the man couldn’t move, neither could she. If there was more than one monster, or it decided to ignore her in favor of easier prey…no, she needed to stand her ground. As quietly as she could, she unlocked the window and pushed it open. Kneeling next to the window, she propped her rifle on the sill and waited.

Vic woke with a start, gasping for air in the dark of the cave. Her heart was pounding in her ears. The air was cool, but sweat was pouring down her face. On reflex, her hand grabbed for the hatchet resting at her side, ready to strike at anything nearby.

The cave was quiet. The dawn light outside was leaking gently into the room. Vic exhaled. It had been a dream. She had been running…no, she had been still but the world was running around her…but weren’t her legs moving? And there was a…shape…

Vic took another deep breath. The dream was gone already, and she wasn’t interested in bringing it back to mind. Dreams were for seers and shamen, and she wasn’t either. She had a long way to travel, and wasting time with dreams wouldn’t help her find the next bullet. She stood up from her roll and stretched the kinks out of her muscles.

Her eye lit on her father’s revolver as she dressed. For six months straight she had been hunting the Borderlands for the bullets, and now the first bullet was in her hands. It didn’t feel real.

Leveling Up is an important part of RPGs. Really, it’s an important part of gaming in general; whether increasing your character’s options, adding troops to your army, or personally getting better at “the game.” While I certainly appreciate the latter form of improvement, I do want to add a more concrete mechanical form of “leveling up.”

In the 0.1 version of the ruleset, this was handled with the total of a Manifestation’s Tier and Bond. A “first level” Manifestation would only have 1 Tier and 1 Bond, while a higher level Manifestation might have 3 Tier and 2 Bond.

In the 0.2 version of the ruleset, the Tier/Bond system has been replaced with a single Emotional-stat mechanic, with Tier representing a Manifestation’s “Level.” This is much simpler and easier to manage, but what does a higher Tier actually do?

As things turned out, the man was finished and standing by the ash of the fire when Vic returned. She tossed him a waterskin and hoisted her bag over her back. “Let’s go.”

“Towards the mountains?” The man coughed. “I thought we were headed east. What’s over there?”

“Me, before nightfall. Quit your whining.”

“What about the…the body?”

“Doesn’t keep good, let the vultures take care of it,” Vic sighed. “Come on, move it! We’re losing light.”

As they walked, Vic took out her father’s map and compass. They were heading northeast, now. If she had read the map properly, they should be about here, but if she saw what she thought she saw, they needed to be about here…

Vic cursed her father again. Then, out of misplaced frustration, she swore at her mother. Neither of them had bothered to write a proper map, and now it was her job to wander around the Borderlands, searching for the bullets that they should have picked up years ago.