Bright-Dark 3d6 Role-Playing Game - Game Master

The GM shapes the world, presents danger honestly, and stays neutral. This section provides principles, guidance, and tools for running Bright‑Dark with fairness, empathy, and emotional clarity.

GAME MASTER SECTION

TONE GUIDANCE

Bright-Dark’s tone is human-scale danger in a wounded world. The GM's role in portraying that world is to preserve that tone.

How to Maintain Tone

• Violence is costly. Even winning hurts. Even surviving leaves marks.
• Creatures feel fear. Morale checks matter. Surrender is common. Fleeing is natural.
• Magic is powerful but unstable. Critical hits and fumbles should feel emotional, not mechanical.
• Hope is fragile. Light Bonuses matter because they represent real courage.
• Darkness is seductive. Darkness Penalties matter because fear and despair change outcomes.
• The world is wounded. Environments are broken, strange, or scarred.
• Encounters reflect that.
• Reaction rolls make new NPCs unpredictable. The players will not get too comfortable.
• Avoid distractions. Checking phones, side conversations, and discussing rules breaks immersion and tension.

Tone is present in the rules and mechanics but not enforced by them. Tone can only succeed when the participants at the table are invested.

Show Lightly, Tell Lightly

The GM should reveal the world’s wounds through small details, quiet moments, and honest consequences, not through speeches or heavy-handed narration. Trust players to feel the tone on their own. Bright-Dark works best when the GM offers just enough to guide the mood and lets the players meet the story halfway.

In other words, show enough, tell enough.

ENCOUNTER DESIGN

Bright-Dark encounters are not balanced set-piece encounters. They are situations; moments of danger, emotion, and uncertainty. The GM’s job is not to create “fair fights,” but to create meaningful choices.

Principles of Encounter Design

• Encounters are problems, not battles. Most fights can be avoided, escaped, or resolved through mercy or parley.
• Danger is real. Even a single creature can threaten a group if the fiction supports it.
• Use the environment. Tight spaces, unstable ground, darkness, noise, and obstacles matter more than stat blocks.
• Let players see danger coming. Foreshadowing gives them agency: they choose whether to engage.
• Encounters escalate emotionally, not numerically. A wounded creature becoming desperate is more interesting than adding reinforcements.

Encounter Types

• Ambushes: Sudden, frightening, chaotic.
• Standoffs: Tense, slow, full of negotiation.
• Hunts: Pursuit, fear, exhaustion.
• Desperate Battles: Rare, brutal, short.

When to Call for a Morale Check

Please use Morale Checks! Use when:

• Half the NPCs are down
• Half the NPCs collective health is missing
• The leader falls
• The environment shifts (fire, collapse, darkness)
• The PCs do something terrifying or awe-inspiring

Morale checks keep encounters from becoming grindy and reinforce the emotional realism of combat.

RUNNING WOUNDED BEINGS

Wounded beings are not monsters. They are creatures shaped by pain, fear, hunger, or corruption. They behave like animals, spirits, or people under duress.

Principles for Running Wounded Beings

• They avoid pain. They do not fight to the death unless cornered or compelled.
• They communicate. Growls, gestures, posture, cries, or magic can all be communication.
• They escalate unpredictably. A wounded being may suddenly flee, lash out, freeze, or plead.
• They respond to emotion. Fear, anger, calm, or compassion can change their behavior.
• They have motives. Hunger, territory, fear, protection, grief, corruption.

GM Guidance

Describe wounded beings as living, not as stat blocks. Let players feel the tension of fighting something that doesn’t want to die. This reinforces Bright-Dark’s emotional core: Violence is never simple.

SOCIAL INTERACTION GUIDANCE

In Bright-Dark, social interaction is just exploration and discovery of a character through conversation. Even dangerous creatures do not make violence their first choice and may be open to communication. They're not morally evil; They're complex, layered, and hurting. Your job as GM is to portray a character in a way that allows the players to figure them out.

Two Kinds of NPCs

There are two kinds of NPCs. Simple NPCs and Complex NPCs.

• Simple NPCs are shallow and generic. They don't have depth or complexity. They have first names, one or two-note personalities, basic physical descriptions, jobs, etc. These things let you run an NPC functionally and create the illusion that this is a real character. They are the ones who run shops, serve drinks, and occupy taverns. Recurring Simple NPCs can develop complexity over time.
• Complex NPCs have layers. How many layers depends on your game's needs and your abilities. Complex NPCs are important main characters such as mentors, patrons, allies, rivals, sidekicks, local authority figures, minor villains, and major villains.

Simple NPCs can, but do not often challenge players, and conversations with them often have low to no stakes.

Complex NPCs don't need to challenge players, or they can offer varying challenge that ranges from reluctance to help, making unfair requests, posing dilemmas, acting as obstacles who can't be reasoned with, or serving as the engine that drives the conflict in the adventure.

A Complex NPCs has:

• A goal: Something they want. This is their source of hope, and lacking it is also their source of fear, temptation, or despair.
• A wound: An emotional injury due to a past trauma. If the wound is unfair or undeserved, the NPC becomes more sympathetic. This is their grief and their darkness.
• A shield: This is a metaphorical shield. Conceptually, it is a coping or defense mechanism that protects the NPC from the pain of the wound, but ironically also protects the wound from anyone trying to heal it. The NPC may not be aware of their own shield. When their wound is touched, the shield raises. In practice, it appears as a behavior or a belief: Avoiding responsibility, blaming others, justifying harming, withdrawing, or lashing out.
• Redeeming traits: Qualities that make the NPC likeable or valuable, even if the NPC is dangerous or destructive. This is their light. Show this through small kindnesses, quiet courage, or their meaningful connections.
• An external obstacle: Something outside the NPC, often personified as another character, that prevents the NPC from achieving their goal.

As a GM, understanding this checklist will help you to conceive of complex NPCs who feel human, wounded, and worth engaging with. These are things you should be revealing to players your portrayal and descriptions of NPCs. As a general rule, complex NPC traits should be discovered, not announced. Hint at this information or imply it rather than explicitly state it, unless the fiction demands it!

The implicit gameplay loop of conversations is asking questions to learn what people need, make an offer, hear their objections and adjust the offer. Feel free to explain that right away! Observant an emotionally aware players may pick up on complex NPC traits, but they may not know what to do with them. That's where the next section comes in.

Ending Conflicts with Complex NPCs

Here are several actionable ways players can confront complex NPCs and try to resolve their conflicts. If players can't figure these things out, it's more than OK to communicate them through other NPCs! Thus, connections with the world are reinforced.

Healing the Wound: Some NPCs keep their wound a carefully guarded secret. Some NPCs bear their wound openly. If the players can identify the wound, they may be able to heal it. Wounds can be caused by broken things that must be fixed, soiled things that must be cleaned, lost things that must be returned, secrets that must uncovered, a rot that needs purified or purged, truths that must be spoken, or injustices that must be righted.

Removing the Shield: The shield is not an obstacle for the PCs, it's an obstacle for the NPC. If the NPC becomes aware of their shield, they may lower it and face their wound. The wound remains, but the conflict softens.

Assisting with the Goal: The NPC's unfulfilled goal is the source of hope but simultaneously the source of despair. Fulfilling the NPCs Goal, or giving them a way to do it themselves, does not heal the NPC but can resolve some conflict.

Appealing to Redeeming Traits: Redeeming traits are their light. Players can appeal to these to resolve or suspend conflict.

• Appeal to their connections: Ask them to think about what their loved ones would want from them.
• Appeal to their virtues. Remind them of what they believe in and why it's valuable.
• Appeal to their legacy: Remind them of what they've accomplished and how it's been a light for someone else.
• Appeal to their purpose: Remind them of what they're here for and how they've strayed.

Clearing the Obstacle: If the players can identify the NPCs goal, then they may also identify the obstacle preventing it. Removing the obstacle resolves part of the conflict.

Violence: This option should be the last resort. It means risking harm or death to slay something that might not deserve being slain. If players choose violence, go to combat, but the social encounter is not suspended or ended. Meaningful conversation can still occur in fragments on each side's turn. When violence is presented as an option, think of a cost. Who does this cost hurt and how? How will this affect the players?

Creativity is not about creatively bending rules; it’s about bending the fiction.

PACING

Pace means the speed at which the story unfolds. It's about how fast or how slow we find out what happens next. You can alternate slow and fast pacing. Here are some general tips to keep the pace lively:

• Longer descriptions = slow pace; Shorter Description = fast pace. Description length can create atmosphere. Use longer descriptions to establish a new scene or to introduce something big and meaningful. Use shorter, punchier descriptions to everything else.
• Resolve Player Actions Generously. When players describe what they do and how, if it reasonably satisfies the what the character needs to do to advance the scene, let it happen. Otherwise, the scene drags.
• Design Simplicity: Players can get stuck on the simplest things. Making challenges more complex can make them interesting, but not everything needs to be complex.
• Blow Something Up, Explain it Later. Inject energy. If the scene or story is stuck or boring, make something happen and find an explanation for it later.
• Timers. Add a ticking clock. Something needs to happen now or very, very soon. This encourages urgency and faster decision making.
• Scene Size: Smaller scenes with fewer characters, fewer problems, and fewer choices go fast; Larger scenes with many characters, multiple threads, drag. If a scene drags, collapse it.
• Cut on a Choice: When the players make a choice, end the scene. Don't linger on the logistics. Simply a scene's resolution.
• NPCs. NPCs who demand attention can slow a scene down. NPCs who demand action can speed it up.
• Offer Two Clear Choices. Complexity slows the game down. Simplicity permits speed.
• Ask Direct Questions. What do you do next? If players drift, rein them in by reiterating the situation, its stakes, the perceived options, and ask what players do?
• Summarize the Move. Cut off long discussion. It sounds like you want to do X. Let's go.
• Hard Cuts and Soft Transitions. Jump straight to the next meaningful moment or scene for speed. Describe how they get there to slow it down.
• Let emotional Scenes breath. Use silence.
• Speed Up Logistics like shopping.

RULINGS

The GM's job is to act as a referee and make rulings in a game where the rules are intentionally left open-ended in many places. A ruling is a decision about what works and what doesn't, and the outcome. Your criteria is "how would this work in real life?" In otherwards, realism as a baseline for difficulty and logic. This keeps the game intuitive for all participants. No one should ask if the rules permit an action, they only need to ask if the logic of the setting and the fiction permits it, and the answer should be easy.

Evaluating Difficulty or Target Numbers (TN)

Assume that player characters are adventurers who are competent at basic adventuring things like tying knots, climbing rope, starting campfires, dressing wounds, using peasant or improvised weapons, and riding horses. They're generalists who have learned a little bit of everything.

Consider the difficulty of general actions based on how likely they would succeed in real life if an ordinary person were to attempt it rather than assign a difficulty to design a challenging game. Don't be afraid to decide that a general action without tension or consequences should succeed automatically.

In addition to being generalists, characters may have specialties. Allow character concepts, attributes, and/or talents define this. Basic competency at some disciplines demands a prerequisite advanced knowledge, refined skill, or extensive training such that an ordinary person without it cannot perform the action. Consider mathematics, surgery, engineering, crafting of quality goods, deciphering languages, or magic as examples of this. Use your judgment.

In effect, there is no class or skill system. There is only the logic of the character in the story. What suits the logic of your setting is your criteria for limitations.

Adjudicating Creativity

Bright-Dark thrives when players think creatively. The GM’s job is to reward creativity, not punish it with mechanical strictness.

Principles

• Say yes, then shape the fiction. If a player tries something clever, let it matter.
• Use situational modifiers, not new rules. +1 or –1 is enough to represent cleverness or difficulty.
• Let the environment respond. Creative actions often change terrain, morale, or positioning.
• Avoid mechanical mini-games. Don’t create subsystems for climbing, grappling, or trick shots. Use the core mechanic and move on.
• Reward intent. Encourage using empathy. If a player describes a careful, thoughtful action, give them a Light Bonus. If they act recklessly or emotionally, consider a Dark Penalty.

Examples

• Using a cloak to blind a creature: Situational +1 to hit it, it hits at -1
• Throwing sand to distract: creature clears eyes for a round, loses track of players
• Singing to calm a spirit: Emotion roll with Light Bonus
• Charging recklessly: attack roll with Dark Penalty
• Using terrain cleverly: advantage in positioning or Defense TN

HOW TO PREP & RUN BRIGHT-DARK ADVENTURES

Preparation

The GM prepares the setting and the people who live there, not the story. The adventure should contain:

• A Settlement, a Dungeon, and the Wilderness in between are the core assets of the average adventure. Not all adventures have all three and sometimes they blend together. For example, a dungeon beneath a settlement has no wilderness. A wilderness shrine may function as both settlement and dungeon.
• Opportunities for players to pursue their own goals, or to take steps on the path. Prepare ways for the players to discover these organically in play through rumors, NPCs, strange events, etc.
• Obstacles, including people or situations that get in the players' way. They could reflect the world's wound or local tensions.
• Key NPCs who can help the player characters in small ways by directing them to opportunities, or who can warn them of obstacles and provide hints on how to handle them. Remember that they are affected by the world's wound.
• The World's Wound. Always prep content around the wound. Let the wound inform ideas. Always include subtle reminders for players such as a server who has lost family, an ex-soldier who can't sleep, a merchant who's made money but lost friends, a village that's been forgotten about. These reinforce tone.
• At least one Complex NPC. Prepare one complex NPC. In game terms, this is your "boss". Any NPC can challenge the PCs, but any NPC who is going to present a major challenge should be a complex NPC.
• Stakes: This game asks you to learn what's important to your players' characters so that you can build something into your adventures that the player will care about. A character with a personal goal to pursue means an active player. If the character has no reason to be here, the player will question what they're doing there.

Running

• Subtly is your friend. Bright-Dark is not about beating players over the head with the tone. It's about hinting the tone, not announcing it. Say enough, show enough.
• Hook the Players. Present personal stakes for your player characters early. Give each character, and therefore the player, a reason to care. 
• Set the players up for action. Present enough information players need so that they can start making choices in play. Give them a location with hints of a conflict and ask them what they do. Give them a chance to learn about the conflict on their own and reward it.
• Answer and Ask. Whenever you answer a dramatic question, ask a new one. If players run out of question that need answering, the game stalls. Identify the dramatic question of a scene. Then the question is answered, cut off the scene and establish a new scene with a new dramatic question.
• Pacing is about rhythm, not speed. Rhythm is the balance of descriptions and silence, tension and release. One speed is not rhythmic. Let emotional scenes linger. Simplify logistical scenes. 

HOW TO USE LIGHTS, WOUNDS, AND DARKNESS

This game uses a lot of figurative language. Here's what these things mean in plain English.

• Wound = A conflict
• Light = Something that mitigates conflict
• Darkness = Something that aggravates conflict

The world's wound is an external conflict that the characters face. The character's wounds are the internal conflict they carry. Light is something that makes that conflict bearable, not better. It could be a kind friend or some intangible trait like emotional resilience. Darkness is something that makes the conflict worse. If it's a person, it's often someone who doesn't care rather than someone who actively seeks to make it worse, but there are people who do seek to make it worse.

Use literal light and darkness in your scenes and descriptions to telegraph these things to your players the way old cowboy movies stuck good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats. Put small lights around helpful people. Put big lights around exceptionally good people. Put the dim lights and darkness around dangerous characters. Let lights flicker when things get tense or uncertain. Let them dim or go out when things go wrong. Let lights brighten in moments of emotional resolution. 

Reminder: Light and dark are emotional cues, not moral cues.

HOW TO HANDLE CORRUPTION AND EMOTIONAL STAKES

Corruption in Bright-Dark is not about evil, malice, or madness, it's about giving into temptation, fear, or despair. The world's wound weights on everyone, and so does each person's own wound. Temptations offer an easy way out but at a cost. Fear makes people abandon people to preserve themselves. Despair causes people to abandon hope. 

Temptation, fear, and despair have no mechanics. They describe changes in emotional states that lead to decisions, consequences, and fail states. Emotional stakes mean that the results of conflicts can cost people their kindness, courage, and hope. Losing these things is corruption.

When players fail, these are the stakes for their NPC allies. An NPC who becomes corrupted may withdraw, break, or become dangerous. An NPC enemy who becomes corrupted may escalate, lash out, or become a greater threat. 

There are optional player-facing rules for this if players want player-corruption.

TAKING 10

Taking 10 means forgoing a roll of the dice and granting the player a 10. Then, add modifiers. This is intended for routine or trivial tasks where external stress or pressure is not present and for the purposes of speeding up the game.

FATE ROLL

Use a Fate Roll only when the fiction is open-ended and you genuinely don't know what happens next, or for when you want to be as surprised as the players. Roll 1d6. 1 to 3 means something unfavorable happens to the players, 4 to 6 means something favorable happens to them. Is the next door locked? Is the storm getting worse? The GM interprets. Note that the fate roll does not substitute the GM playing their characters (the NPCs).

RADIANT MOMENT (RESERVED MECHANIC)

This is your "miracle" mechanic. It represents a moment where the world responds to a character's exceptional courage, kindness, or hope. Roll 5d6, keep the highest 3 or auto-success if the TN is 14 or less.

Radiant moments are rare; big moment rare. The GM may award a radiant moment to a player when they act with hope in a bleak situation, protect someone at real personal cost, show profound kindness in a wounded world, rekindles fragile hope, or resists corruption or despair.

CORRUPTION (OPTIONAL, STORY-DRIVEN MECHANIC)

This is never a mechanic the GM imposes on the players; rather, it is a mechanic the players may invoke voluntarily as a story choice.

A character gains 1 point of corruption when they voluntarily choose a path of fear, despair, or temptation when the emotional stakes are clear. Corruption does not measure morality; it measures how heavily a character's wound is weighing on them. Corruption should be rare, meaningful, and dramatic, never punitive. Avoid corruption for tactical decisions, mistakes, or accidents.

The moment they earn a third corruption point, they face a Radiant Choice. The character confronts their wound and chooses redemption or fails. This is a player choice, not an automatic consequence.

Redemption should feel costly. It reduces corruption from 3 to 2 points (it does not reset to 0), grants a Radiant Moment, and ends the corruption arc.

Failure should feel heartbreaking. The character becomes an NPC villain, and the player must create a new character.

A character can only earn one Radiant Moment per corruption arc. A corruption arc is a story arc; it means going from 0 to 3 corruption points. Corruption below 3 points can only be reduced once per act through a single moment of radiant redemption. Routine kindness cannot reduce corruption; redemption must confront or resolve part of the character's wound.

A new corruption arc begins only when the GM judges that the story has meaningfully shifted, the character is facing new emotional stakes, and corruption is narratively appropriate again. 

THE d66 TABLE (A GM TOOL)

This game does not use large dice, and so you may wonder how to create big tables. You can create a table with 1d6 which generates six items at even chances, or 2d6 which generates eleven items with rare rolls and common rolls. If this is limiting, the alternative is the d66 table. Roll two six-sided dice and read them as a two-digit number (first die is the tens place, second die is the ones place). For example, a roll of a 1 and a roll of a 2 are read as 21. You can generate thirty-six different numbers from 11 to 66, skipping numbers with 0, 7, 8, and 9. Another way to think about it is that you make six tables each with six items. Your first 1d6 roll chooses a table, your second 1d6 roll chooses an item.

If thirty-six results are too many, make the tens place roll using an improvised 1d3 where a 1-2 is treated as 1, 3-4 is treated as 2, and 5-6 is treated as 3. This gives you eighteen items with equal chances to occur. Alternatively, use an improvised 1d2 (1 to 3 = 1, 4 to 6 = 2) for a table of twelve items.

GLOSSARY OF CONDITIONS

None. Refer to the Core Mechanics section for the Situational Modifiers rule. Conditions exist in the fiction, not the rules.

MYTHIC BRIGHT-DARK (OPTIONAL EXPANSION)

Mythic Bright-Dark is the large-scale cousin of Bright-Dark. It keeps the tone’s wounded wonder, fragile hope, tragic monsters, and bittersweet endings, but expands the scope to mythic forests, ancient spirits, and ecological wounds. It is Bright-Dark with Miyazaki’s sense of scale and sacredness. If your players want an epic-scale story using bright-dark tones, this is where you go.

Tone Element	Too Weak	Just Right	Too Strong
Light	Everyday sunlight, mundane beauty	Sacred radiance, sun-shafts through ancient trees, shimmering spirits	Blinding holiness, divine judgment, overwhelming glory
Emotion	Personal moodiness, small feelings	Human emotion echoed by spirits, forests, storms; grief that feels ancestral	Operatic melodrama, mythic tragedy every scene
Courage	Ordinary bravery, simple resolve	Courage that reconciles humans and spirits, standing between wounded forces	Heroic destiny, chosen-one arcs, epic sacrifice
Wonder	Pretty scenery, common magic	Ancient forests, guardian beasts, living mountains, spiritual ecology	World-breaking miracles, god-tier spectacle
Darkness	Simple danger, mundane threats	Curses, corruption, wounded gods, imbalanced ecosystems	Apocalyptic evil, demons, cosmic horror
Stakes	Personal stakes only	Human stakes that ripple into forests, rivers, spirits, seasons	World-ending stakes, continent-scale destruction
Mood	Pleasant fantasy, pastoral calm	Mythic melancholy, sacred quiet, awe mixed with sorrow	Oppressive mythic dread, bleak fatalism

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Bright-Dark 3d6 Role-Playing Game - Alchemy

Alchemy blends craft, intuition, and wonder. This section explains how player crafting works, as well as how magic items exist the grounded fantasy.

ALCHEMY

Fantasy Science

Alchemy is not magic, it’s fantasy science. Potions, mixtures, and concoctions behave the way a common person imagines science might work in a fantasy world: plausible, imperfect, and never miraculous but just enough.

Crafting

Players can craft alchemical items if they have the Alchemy talent. Crafting potions is automatic in a workshop or laboratory. In the field, you rely on a portable kit, and results are not guaranteed. Crafting time, materials, costs, skill, and tools are hand-waved for the sake of play.

Tools and ingredients exist in the fiction, not in inventory slots.

Theme

Alchemy is freeform. Describe the potion you want to create within the broad theme of "Fantasy Science". Effects should be grounded in chemistry, biology, herbalism, metallurgy, or similar pseudo-scientific ideas.

Limitations

Some ingredients are rare or costly, and mixtures spoil quickly. You cannot hoard potions or outfit allies with an arsenal. Your workshop may store preserved ingredients, but not finished mixtures.

You can maintain two prepared potions at a time. Creating a new one forces you to discard or destabilize an old one.

This keeps alchemy meaningful without complex resource management.

Field-Crafting (Unstable Results)

Crafting in the field with your portable kit is unreliable. When using, consuming, or applying a potion crafted in the field, roll 3d6 + Mind vs TN 12 to determine success.

• Success: The potion works as intended.
• Failure: The potion is flawed, weak, or unreliable.
• Critical Failure: A complication occurs, determined by the fiction or the GM.

When in doubt about crafting time, assume one potion requires at least one hour; a non-trivial amount of time in a potentially dangerous space.

One assistant can meaningfully contribute by adding their mechanical bonuses if they're also an alchemist. They cannot reduce crafting time.

Botched Potions

You cannot know whether a potion works until a full dose is tested (micro-testing is inadequate). It’s possible to accidentally poison someone or make them sick with a bad mixture.

Important: Failures are never catastrophic. They are scientific imperfections, not explosions. This keeps field-crafting interesting without discouraging it.

FANTASTIC CONSUMABLES

This subsection describes potions found within the setting rather than potions crafted by players.

This is not a game where magic items are common and ordinary. Fantasy stories and games where characters can easily obtain magic potions or scrolls makes magic feel like a disposable commodity. This makes magic feel mundane. In Bright-Dark 3d6 RPG, magic and magic items are rare, prestigious, dangerous, and wonderous. This makes them special, valuable, and preserves the grounded tone of the game. Magic items should feel like a light at the end of a tunnel rather than a flashlight or a torch. They are story objects, not mechanical conveniences; discoveries, not supplies.

Sample Potions

Healing Potion    Recover 1d6 lost Health

Stamina Drink    Recover 1d6 lost Stamina

Ether-Rich Water    Recover 1d6 lost Ether

Anit-Venom    Stops the progress of venom and relieves the effects in an hour

Poison Cure    Stops the progress of poison and relieves the effects in an hour

Sleep Poison    Drink to immediately induce sleep. Remain asleep for a night

Deadly Poison    If drank, you die.

SIDE-EFFECTS

Many players in other games rely on healing to be a reliable and consistent, but this undermines tension. Potions are hand-made by alchemists and can be unreliable. Some of them use different recipes and have access to ingredients of varying quality. Therefore, not every potion has the same efficacy or potency. Further, some of them have better work habits than others. Sloppy alchemists might make potions with contaminants that can make you sick. Finally, potions spoil with age.

When players drink a potion, the GM may call for an Endurance Roll. If two potions are consumed in a single day, an Endurance roll is forced. When in doubt, assume the Difficulty TN is 12. On a critical failure, the body expels the potion (vomit) before the potion takes effect. On a normal failure, the potion works as intended, but the character suffers one of the following:

• Minor sickness for 1d3 days and a situational -1 penalty to all actions.
• Moderate sickness and speed is reduced to Slow (15 ft) for 1d3 days.
• Severe sickness and, either their Strength or Agility is temporarily set to a -3 for 1d3 days.

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Bright-Dark 3d6 Role-Playing Game - Magic

Magic and Mages in Bright-Dark

Magic is not common or ordinary. It's rare and mysterious like a wonder, and dangerous too. It's also a mark of quiet prestige as the path of magic teaches you how small you are in the world, while potentially making you bigger in it. People do not casually wield magic openly or show it off. They respect it and fear it.

Magic is not a skill you improve at through study and practice. Skills are natural, technical. This is something supernatural. It's harnessed by knowledge, emotion, or will. You improve your knowledge, you grow in emotion, you build your will. Improving these qualities improves your use of magic.

Mages who misuse magic are hated. Mages are sought by those who want power.

MAGIC

Magic in Bright-Dark is shaped by will, theme, and story, not by lists of spells. It is flexible, creative, and narrative-first.

Themes

Each character’s magic is limited to a theme. A theme defines the style and limits of their magic. Most character have one theme. A rare few have two themes if it suits their story, and this typically describes characters who feel more mystical, trained, or unusual. No character should have more than two themes.

Example themes: Fire, illusion, movement, summoning, healing, shadow, memory, stone, wind, etc.

Themes are intentionally broad. They give players direction without restricting creativity.

Casting Magic

When a player wants to cast a spell, they:

• Describe the intended effect in the fiction.
• Roll vs the difficulty of the spell type: Minor Spell (TN 9) or Major Spell (TN 12).
• The player rolls 3d6 + Attribute + Talent bonus to see if the magic succeeds. Refer to the Combat Mechanics subsection in the Combat Section for more on magic mechanics.

There is no spell catalog. Magic is shaped by imagination, not by rules. This encourages players to stay engaged with the story rather than disengage to check mechanics.

Magic and the Setting

Magic is limited by the tone of the world. In Bright-Dark:

• Magic is rare, mysterious, and dangerous.
• Magic does not break physics.
• Magic has lower, middle, and upper limits defined by the setting.
• Magic may be powerful, but never superpowered.
• Magic is wondrous, but never effortless.

This helps players understand what is possible, what is risky, and what is forbidden.

Scale of Effects

Minor Spells

• Difficulty TN 9
• Small effects, immediate, personal, or subtle. One condition with a duration of the combat or 1d6 in damage or healing.
• Cost: 1 Ether

Major Spells

• Difficulty TN 12
• Large effects, dramatic, wide, lasting, or powerful. Either a powerful single spell or an AOE.
• Powerful Single Spell: either two conditions, 2d6 damage / healing, or one condition + 1d6 damage / healing, on a single character or object.
• AOE (area of effect): One condition or 1d6 in damage or healing affecting characters within a space (a diameter about 6" or one pencil length across); 
• -Cost: 2 Ether for a single powerful attack, 2-3 Ether for an AOE.

World-changing effects are impossible.

Failure

• On a failure, the spell fizzles and the caster loses 1 Ether.
• On a critical failure, the spell also misfires and creates a complication determined either by the fiction or the GM. This keeps magic dangerous and interesting.

Signature Spell (Optional Rule)

A signature spell is a single, named magical effect tied to your theme. Whenever you cast that specific spell, you gain +1 to your spellcasting roll. Signature spells deepen your magical identity without expanding your theme. 

Signature spells are unlocked through story, not mechanics.

A character may gain a signature spell during a moment of emotional clarity, through a ritual or sacrifice, by interacting with a wound, by learning from a spirit or mentor, through a magical misfire, or by reaching a personal milestone.

Signature spells should feel earned, personal, and tied to the character’s journey.

Magic Talents

If you are a magic-user, you may choose one of these talents as part of character improvement.

• Magic Speech: Magic words are their own language, and some creatures speak in this language. Any magic-user may have a broken understanding, but you are fluent as if a native speaker.
• Magic Sense: You faintly sense the presence of nearby magic.
• Ritual Magic: You may cast a spell as a ritual by sacrificing something meaningful (such as 1 Health or a precious item). The ritual takes about 10 minutes and automatically succeeds.
• Magic Journeyman: Add +1 to spellcasting rolls.
• Magic Master (Prerequisite: Magic Journeyman): Add +2 to spellcasting rolls. Replaces the +1 from Magic Journeyman.
• Magic Overcharge: Spend 1 additional Ether to add a bonus die to your spellcasting roll.
• Efficient Caster: Reduce Ether costs by 1 (minimum 1). Spend 0 Ether on a failure.
• Spellshield: Add +1 to resist spells or magical effects targeting you.
• Magic Reservoir: Your maximum Ether capacity increases by 1.
• Magic Recovery: You recover 1 Ether as part of a short rest.
• Magic Potency: Your spell deals +1 additional damage or healing, or its duration lasts an additional round.
• Magic Eater: You can absorb ether as an action by touching another creature. You recover +1 Ether, but you also feel your wound intensely. The creature must have at least 1 Ether to absorb which is lost. If the choice to take Ether from a friend comes from fear, despair, or temptation, gain 1 corruption.

Optional Magic Talents

• Spell Stability: You gain +1 to maintain ongoing magical effects.
• Theme Expansion: Your theme expands slightly (GM approval): fire → smoke; shadow → silence; memory → forgetting.
• Arcane Anchor: Once per day, you may stabilize a spell so it lasts longer than normal.
• Emotional Casting: When your spell aligns with your emotional state, gain +1 to the roll.
• Wound-Touched: Gain +1 when casting spells that interact with the world’s wounds.

Optional Rule: Wild Magic

Magic is unpredictable. Sometimes it surges. Sometimes it bites. There can be cursed areas that affect magic in ways that a magic-user can't anticipate. There can be personal curses that affect your control. Emotional instability or proximity to the world's wound can also cause wild magic.

When you cast a spell, designate one die of your 3d6 spellcasting roll to be your Wild Die.

After rolling:

If the Wild Die shows a 1 (backlash), subtract your highest die from the total result. This dramatically increases the chance of failure and complication.

If the Wild Die shows a 6 (surge), the Wild Die explodes! Roll an additional d6 and add it to your total. If that die is also a 6, it explodes again. This dramatically increases the chance of powerful, dramatic success.

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