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
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.
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 INERACTION 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?
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
Creativity is not about creatively bending rules; it’s about bending the fiction.
Tone
Pacing
Rulings
How to run Bright-Dark Adventures
How to use Wounds and Lights
How to Handle Corruption and Emotional Stakes
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.
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 doesn’t know what happens next, or 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. 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.
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 |
Monsters
Monsters in Bright-Dark are characters, not things to kill. They don't give out experience points or loot. They aren't morally evil or mindless swarming hoards. They're wounded beings who live in the darkness. They don't worship it. They're dangerous because they're wounded. They're lashing out because they're hungry, confused, sad, or frightened, not angry or cruel or warlike.
Bright-Dark does not have a catalog of monsters. Traditional fantasy monsters must be recontextualized for Bright-Dark. Bright-dark is a tone that is built on emotion, wounds, and meaning. A monster that doesn't fulfill this doesn't fit. Monsters must be tailored, not generic.
Monsters should challenge players emotionally, not just mechanically. When creating a monster, there should be consequences for killing it besides life and death like a failed objective, a lost opportunity, a ruined relationship, a hidden truth that stays a secret, or the weight that they're hurting something gentle or noble that can't help itself. These are emotional stakes. Monsters do not simply fill space in the dungeon.
Create monsters who are dangerous yet sympathetic, even if that sympathetic quality isn't immediately obvious. A goblin is not malicious, it's hungry and anxious. It uses tricks first, violence if cornered. A wolf is not a predator, it's a mourner of its lost pack. An ogre is not a brute, it's a misunderstood creature that can't control its strength; It's not his fault he breaks people. A sanctuary guardian feels betrayed because his shrine has been desecrated. A ghost can't pass on until she finds out who stole her precious wedding ring.
Keep the scale human, not cosmic or ecological. Bright-Dark is too delicate for generic threats. Everything must be emotionally anchored.
Monsters are fixable by calming, cleansing, comforting, guiding, healing, and understanding. Violence is possible, but compassion is powerful.
Design, portray, and describe monsters like Complex NPCs with a wound, a shield, redeeming traits, a goal, and an obstacle. Complex NPCs are described in the Game Master section. For your benefit, consider how these complex NPC traits affect its behavior and include small notes within the traits. Players can soften conflict, possibly resolve it, by helping the monster rather than hurting it.
MONSTER STATS
Monsters are not designed with the same logic as a player character. Monsters only need a few stats:
Health: Either a range for the average monster of its kind (example 2-5), or a specific amount (example 10) will do.
Two Attributes: Monsters don't need attributes. They need two numbers, a high one and a low one. For actions that it should be good at, use the high number. For actions it's average or poor at, use the low number. For example, a +1 and a -1 or a +3 and a 0.
These numbers added to any of its 3d6 rolls.
Defense TN: The number that players need to roll against to hit the monster. When in doubt, assume 10. Sometimes, an arbitrary Defense TN is better for the fiction or the game than a Defense TN based on the logic of armor.
If a star appears by Defense TN (*), this means the monster may not be harmed by mundane attacks, and a silvered weapons or magic is needed. A double star (**) means only magic may harm the monster.
Damage: How much damage the monster rolls when it makes a successful attack. If a dice value appears, use the dice value for all its attacks. If Special appears, the attack does something other than reduce health; see its notes.
Size: Size is omitted if a creature's size is intuitive. Some creatures are much larger than a man such as a lion, bear, or ogre. Such creatures cannot be conventionally grappled.
Movement: Assume creatures have Normal Movement (30 feet). Movement is omitted unless the creature has a distinct movement such as slow, fast, flying, teleporting, etc.
Morale TN: This number describes bravery or cowardice. The lower the Morale TN, the braver the creature. 10-11 is average. Refer to the Morale Checks rule in the Core Mechanics section for a full description of the rule.
SAMPLE MONSTERS
Bear: Health 15, Attributes +3, -1, Defense TN 10, Damage 1d6+2, Morale TN 10, Movement climbs at normal speed rather than slow speed
(Variant) Direbear: Health is 25, Hit +4, Defense 12, Damage 2d6
Wound: Grieving because its mate and cubs were hunted by poachers
Shield: Humans will never hurt bear cubs again
Goal: To keep humans out of its territory
Obstacle: Human hunting grounds overlap with the bears territory
Redeeming Traits: it's a perfectly normal bear when no humans are around; not some maladjusted man-eater as believed
Ghost: Health 8-16, Attributes +1, -1, Defense TN 8**, Damage Special, Morale TN 10, Movement Fast, Flying, Hovering
Vitality Drain: On touch, reduces maximum health by 1d6-1 (min 1).
Flight: The ghost can fly.
Intangible: Can move and stop in solid objects.
Possession: The ghost can enter a character's body and take control of it. The character gets one chance to resist being possessed by rolling 3d6+Heart.
Wound: Believes her wedding ring was stolen. This is an injustice.
Shield: Thief should be punished.
Goal: Find her ring.
Obstacle: Her wedding ring is missing, not stolen.
Redeeming Traits: Was a kind person in life.
Goblin: Health 2-5, Attributes +1, -2, Defense TN 9, Damage 1d6-1 (minimum 1), Morale TN 12
(Variant) Goblin Priest: Revered by other goblins. Goblins gain a significant morale boost in the presence of a living goblin priest: Moral TN 9.
(Variant) Goblin Warrior: Health is 10 rather than 2-5, Attributes +2, -1, damage is 1d6.
Wound: Rejected because of their ugliness, mischievousness, and superstition. They are fearful of humans who occasionally try to kill them, and anxious because they're small than most things.
Shield: They need to eat, and humans hurt them first
Goal: Basic survival needs
Obstacle: Forced to live in the most remote parts of the world.
Redeeming Traits: Cunning and clever. Capable of small kindness and quiet courage
Grove Guardian: Health 18-24, Attributes +2, 0 Defense TN 8, Damage 1d6+2, Morale TN 9, Size equivalent to a very large bear
Charge: Antlers and hooves; If hit for at least 5 damage, you are knocked prone and trampled for an additional 1d6 damage.
Wound: Its grove, its home, was burned by careless humans. Now it grieves by howling and moaning.
Shield: Right to a home. Won't let anything happen to its home again!
Goal: It roams to find a new home. It's settling into woods at the edge of human territory. It's quick to defend itself and anything it considers its new territory.
Obstacle: Humans are scared of it. They think it's a man-eating monster.
Redeeming Traits: A gentle giant and a noble creature that ordinarily grooms the woods and takes the forests resources responsibly.
Lion: Health 20, Hit +3, Defense TN 12, Damage 1d6+2, Morale TN 13 because of its injury, 8 normally, Movement is normal (30 ft) because of its injury
(Variant) Liger: Health is 30, Hit +5, Defense 14, Damage 2d6+1 (3-13 damage)
Wound: A debilitating physically injury has made it vulnerable, now it can't hunt its normal prey and resorts to humans. It is ostracized from its pride and is lonely.
Shield: Everything needs to eat.
Goal: It is waiting to heal.
Obstacle: Its wound isn't healing, its rotting.
Redeeming Traits: Doesn't want to eat humans.
Ogre: Health 20, Attributes +3,-1 Defense TN 8, Damage 2d6, Morale TN 10
Wound: Misunderstood and lonely. Not a brute, just doesn't understand its strength and others' fragility. Sad because he keeps accidentally killing his friends.
Shield: I no mean to do it! I good!
Goal: Make a friend.
Obstacle: Everyone is afraid of him and they hunt him.
Redeeming Traits: Kind
Troll: Health 15, Attributes +2, -1, Defense TN 11, Damage 1d6+2, Moral TN 8
Regeneration: At 0 Health, the troll appears dead. It will come back to life in 24 hours unless it is decapitated, de-cored meaning to remove its heart, or fully immolated (burned). Every time the troll comes back to life, it gains 1d6 maximum health, and its damage goes up in the following fashion: 2d6, 2d6+1, 2d6+2, 3d6, 3d6+1, 3d6+2, 4d6, etc.
Wound: Humans attack it first! Humans killed mate! Humans bad!
Shield: Believes its indiscriminate violence is justified.
Goal: Revenge on the man who killed his mate.
Obstacle: Trolls can't go into human societies without facing a pitchfork mob.
Redeeming Traits: Was capable of peace once.
Wolf: Health 7, Attributes +1, 0, Defense TN 11, Damage Bite (see description), Morale TN 9 (in a pack), 12 (alone)
Wolves attack in packs. When they bite, they do 1d3+1 damage, and they can choose to grapple the victim in their jaws which happens automatically. The victims must use their action to break a grapple, and they can only break one grapple per action.
Wound: Its pack died due to a harsh winter. Now it mourns and survives alone.
Shield: Forced to steal human livestock because it can't hunt big prey without its pack.
Goal: Find a new Pack.
Obstacle: Wolf packs are scarce.
Redeeming Traits: Capable of dog-like empathy.
SETTING PRIMER
CORE TONE
Melancholic but Warm - Melancholy is a feeling of sadness with seemingly no particular cause that feels unending. Maybe we can identify a cause, but then we find it to be another symptom rather than the root cause. People are sad, but not gloomy caricatures. Even the gloomiest people can still open up and be warm.
Quiet Courage - Courage is not bravado. Everyone has courage inside them, and they use it a little bit every day when they endure unmet bills or chronic pain or some other silent burden instead of withdrawing from it, or dulling it with indulgences and distraction. They reach out to others who are also struggling when it's risky.
Small Kindness: Kindness encourages people to keep trying. Kindness is a choice. You can keep going about your day and you can overlook things and people, or you can offer someone a friendly smile and a pleasant greeting. Greater kindnesses take effort and sacrifice. Kindness is sometimes a trait of weak people, but it's also a trait of people who are empathetic and who know what it's like to hurt. Small kindnesses have a butterfly effect. They don't magnify in intensity; they just radiate outward.
Fragile Hope: Hope is easily lost. You can choose to keep hoping even when it's hard, or you can choose to abandon hope and accept despair, the overwhelming feeling that nothing matters and nothing is worth doing. Despair is an intensely awful feeling. Giving into despair is tragic. Accepting that things aren't going to improve is not always giving into despair, sometimes its reorienting your hope around your circumstances. Hope is fragile because in Bright-Dark stories, it's easily lost. When people lose hope, that's when they start making poor decisions that cause more harm in the world.
Human Stakes: At its core, this means stories that explore the human condition, but not the rare and extreme expressions of it. Explore why the little things matter to us. It's because they often represent safety and comfort. Explore how fragile people are under pressure and why human relationships are so important. When one person is changed by a loss, how does that effect others? What do they notice? What does it cause them to change about themselves?
Bittersweet Beauty: A scar reminds you of a time you fell. At that time, it felt like something you had to endure, but with time and perspective, it becomes a reminder of something your withstood. You're still here and you're wiser. Marks tell stories. A perfect, pristine tree is not as awe inspiring as one that withstood a lightning strike. Perfect things don't exist. The flaws tell us something.
Gentle Darkness: Darkness is a metaphor; it's not literal darkness. It's the things in life that burden us, make us grieve, make us struggle, makes us afraid, or long for something. It can be the things that cause imperfections in the world to the things that cause more darkness and perpetuate it. Everyone lives with these things. Some cope better than others, but the ones who can't are never painted as evil, cruel or monstrous. Once you go there, you're not exploring a normal aspect of the human condition anymore, you're exploring an extreme, rare aspect, and that's not telling a Bright-Dark story anymore.
Wounded Wonder: Wonder is the sensation of enjoyment you get from wondering about something or imagining what it is and how it works. They make the world seem bigger, brighter, and they give you something to hope for. The older you get, the more you understand, and there's less to wonder about. Wonders are things that you and others don't understand. They're rare. They need not be fantastic, but they can be. A wonder can be how a person survived disaster, how a once sickly tree managed grow into the biggest tree in the forest, a desert oasis, a flower that blooms in the moonlight, or how a deep underground cave formed and what it hides. They have different meanings to different people. The phrase wonders never cease means that just when you think you've figured the world out, you discover there's still more wonders and the sensation of wonder returns to you. These wonders inspire feelings and actions. A wounded wonder is a wonder with a flaw that reminds us of something tragic, like the ruins of an ancient monument defaced by soldiers in the last war, or a broken artifact with a missing piece. The wounds themselves also inspire.
Core Themes
Kindness - People who show kindness are special.
Burden - Everyone has them.
Connection - Friends, family, important relationship. Found Family.
Sacrifice - Earning anything costs something.
Healing - Objectives can be achieved by helping, not harming.
Small Victories - Characters don't win big. They may accumulate many small victories over time and progress towards somewhere big, but they never receive a great big win.
METAPHYSICS
Philosophy about the afterlife, what religion teaches, how the cosmos work, and what gods think; We don't need complex religions and philosophies in a Bright-Dark world because the stories of Bright-Dark are all human scale. There is however, one critical thing you need to know to create a world with a Bright-Dark tone: nothing is certain. It's not a message, it's a vibe. Certainty that gives people confidence that things will all work out in the end gives people confidence and makes hope, quiet courage, and kindness, less meaningful.
Bright-Dark Faith
Faith is not contrary to Bright-Dark, but certainty is. Bright-Dark faith is fragile, wounded, and chosen, not guaranteed. It is the belief that something matters, even when the outcome is uncertain. Faith becomes part of the tone when it behaves like hope: vulnerable, human, and quietly brave. Faith in Bright-Dark is an emotional commitment, not a cosmic certainty. Faith can give comfort in Bright-Dark like a hand on a shoulder or a small lamp in the dark, but not certainty like a prophecy or a final destination. Certainty breaks the tone and tension of bright-dark. Bright-dark faith is not about knowing things will be OK, it's about believing something matters enough to keep going.
Clerics in Bright-Dark
Traditional clerics who channel God are anti-Bright-Dark. Instead, Bright-Dark clerics (if part of the setting) tend to fading lights. They nurture wounded wonders. Power is not granted, it's coaxed. Their miracles are small, fragile, flickering, unreliable, and emotionally costly. Their god is not triumphant, it's fading. The deity is quiet, distant, wounded, dim, and barely present. Certainty is not offered. The cleric's role is not to serve a powerful god, it's to protect the last embers of something sacred. Every miracle is a risk, every blessing is a prayer, and every healing is a plea. Faith hurts, but clerics choose it anyway.
Clerics of Darkness in Bright-Dark
Darkness in Bright-Dark is not evil, malice, demons, cosmic shadows, villainy, a cult, or moral darkness. Darkness is burdens, grief, fear, exhaustion, corruption, trauma, loneliness, illness, the weight that presses on people, and the wound the world carries. Bright-Dark is about coexistence, not opposition. A cleric of darkness in Bright-Dark (if part of the setting) is not a cultist or a necromancer. They tend to the dark things; they don't glorify pain, spread corruption, or serve evil. They show that darkness is something to understand, not defeat. If a bright-dark cleric is a nurse, then a bright-dark cleric of darkness is a hospice nurse.
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.
WORLD BUILDING - THE WORLD'S WOUND MADE PHYSICAL
Adventures in Bright-Dark are character-driven. Deep world building is a low priority. A historically rich world that is scientifically sound creates believability but only a little bit is needed for the fiction. Discover it with your players as they explore it and develop as you go.
There are two approaches to world building: Top-down and bottom-up. I propose a mix. Start with one, then go to the other.
Start top-down. Zoom out and establish a major region: a county, a province, or a small kingdom. Create a skeleton, not an atlas or gazetteer. Name a few important settlements (cities, towns, shrines, lairs, etc.) and a short description about how the wound shapes it.
Next, go bottom-up and establish the starting point: a small village, a shrine, a frontier outpost, or a trade town. Ask how the wound affects this place. Then, write a once sentence explanation for each aspect below, always tying it to the wound.
- Society or Culture: What kind of people or society is it?
- Politics or Government: How is it run?
- Economics: What do they make?
- Religion or Spirituality: Who do the worship?
- Military or Militia: How do they defend themselves?
- History: What is something important about this locations history?
- Geography: What is the climate like? What are one major and two minor geological features?
Name an NPC who embodies each aspect. Write about how they are affected by the wound.
For example: Economics. The town of Little Seriphin grows grain for nearby villages. Thanks to the civil war, men have been conscripted and the village must work harder and longer to work the fields and mills. The local outfitter Edward Hunt no longer has consistent business and is struggling to pay taxes.
World-Building should always point back to people. If a world-building detail doesn’t affect how people live, feel, fear, or hope, it's extraneous.
FACTIONS - THE WORLD'S WOUND MADE SOCIAL
Factions are organizations shaped by the wound. They are groups with power, or groups desperate to gain it. They compete if not oppose each other. Nobles, clergy, merchants, militias, gangs, and guilds can all be factions, but each must be personified by a complex NPC, usually a leader or an important person, with a goal, a wound, an obstacle, a shield, and redeeming qualities.
Bright-Dark is human-scale. Players rarely meet the leaders of powerful factions. Instead, they meet a complex NPC member of lower standing who personifies of the faction: A sheriff, a priest, a merchant, a soldier. They are someone who's life is shaped by the faction's pressure.
Factions create tension by dividing communities. They force people to choose sides. They turn neighbors against each other. They create fear, loyalty, resentment, and desperation.
Sub-factions and rival factions deepen the wound. Deputies betray sheriffs. Clergy undermine nobles. Merchants exploit scarcity. Every faction is wounded, and every faction wounds others.
Factions don’t give quests. They create pressure that shapes NPC behavior
The wound shapes the land. The wound shapes the people. The people shape the story.
EMOTIONAL STAKES
Adventures in Bright-Dark are not about saving the world, slaying the monster, or finding treasure; at least, not for their own sake. Bright-Dark should feel less like a video game and more like a book or a film, where participants play characters and make choices that shape the fiction. We enjoy stories because they make us feel things. We follow characters through complete emotional journeys, sharing their experiences vicariously.
To create that feeling at the table, you must build meaningful conflict, not functional conflict. Players need something personal to care about. Emotional stakes come from three elements
1. A Goal: A goal is something two parties cannot share. “I want Thing A. You want Thing A. Only one of us can have it.” This creates friction, competition, and inevitability. Someone will lose.
2. Stakes: Stakes are what the character stands to lose if they fail. They must be personal, high, and felt. Life-and-death stakes are not the strongest stakes in Bright-Dark. Emotional stakes are stronger:
- The treasure matters because it pays for your sister’s medicine.
- The beast must be stopped because it’s destroying your village’s food for winter.
- You confront the wizard because your son is cursed, even though he might smite you; and then who will care for your son?
Stakes create tension. Tension force choices. Choices lead to consequences. Stakes should feel like a metaphorical death if lost: a once-in-a-lifetime chance, a fragile hope, a relationship, a future, a promise.
3. An Antagonist: Antagonists must be individual characters, not factions or abstract concepts. They must have a wound of their own, and power over the situation
They are someone who can stop the players from achieving their goal; someone who holds the leverage. Confrontations happen on their terms. This makes conflict intense, personal, and messy.
Factions create background tension. Antagonists create scenes. In Bright-Dark, keep everything human in scale, personal, and intimate.
Adventure prep begins with the player characters, not the plot. Emotional stakes require knowledge of the player characters. Their goals, wounds, and connections should inform the conflicts you prepare. In Bright-Dark, every story is tailored, never generic.
THE "WOUNDED WORLD" CONCEPT
IIn Samurai Jack, the world is dominated by Aku. That domination is the world’s wound. You can see and feel it everywhere: people live in fear, cities decay, cruelty is common, indulgence distracts from despair, and nature is plundered. For ordinary people, Aku is not a problem to solve, he is a condition they have learned to live with.
A wounded world is a setting defined by a pervasive, unresolvable tension that shapes every life within it.
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the wound is a century of war that has reshaped every culture. In The Empire Strikes Back, the wound is an oppressive regime backed by a planet-killing superweapon. In Spider-Man (2004), the wound is simply New York itself, a hard city full of hard people.
A wounded world is your setting’s central tension. It is not a literal injury; it is a pervasive, entrenched conflict that affects the setting on a macro-scale and is not going away. Everyone knows about it. Everyone is shaped by it. Everyone has a stance on it. The central tension makes the world feel fuller, alive, and real.
Your world’s wound is the flavor of that tension, the thing that makes the world feel dangerous, dim, and strained, with only small pockets of safety where the danger softens but never disappears.
The wounded world does not directly create obstacles or opportunities for the players. Instead, it creates conditions that everyone must live with. The people living in those conditions, their fears, hopes, wounds, shields, and choices, are what create obstacles or opportunities.
As GM, use the wounded world as a tool for world-building. When you describe places, people, or events, ask how the wound affects these people.
Importantly, there is no quest to solve the wound. This is life.
Scene Framing (how to start a scene with emotional clarity)
Adventure Structure (how to build a 3-act Bright-Dark adventure)
GM Prep Checklist (a one-page summary of your philosophy)
Examples of Play
EXAMPLE SCENARIO: The Village Under Two Shadows
Background
In the empire of Loria, the wound is that the emperor is dead and there is no clear successor to the throne. There's a power vacuum and strife because of it. The empire is not unified. Uncertainty is everywhere.
Count Ebonoble of the County of Gargalad is now the highest-ranking noble in the land. He wants secure there throne for himself by marrying the late emperor's heiress (who is rejected by the people because she is believed to be a witch).
Unbeknown to most people outside the highest levels of the church, the Church of Angelo doesn't want just any noble to succeed the throne, including Count Gargalad. They have secretly prioritized capturing the heiress, giving her a final rite and a pyre. This will earn the church the people's faith and trust and eliminate the heiress as a potential obstacle.
Adventure Location
The village of Little Seraphim in the county of Gargalad. The village is small and remote. It lacks some comforts and luxuries. The wound resonates strongly here in these ways:
-Fear: Men have been conscripted, families are broken and afraid. The Who will be conscripted next? Who won't return?
-Despair. The village must work harder to keep up with the demand for grains which they farm. Taxes have been raised. Laws are tightening to keep people working and paying taxes.
-Temptation: There is a reward for anyone who can help capture the heiress.
-Hope: Something's got to get better, right? Any day now.
Factionalism
The County of Gargalad is taxing and conscripting people. The Church is prioritizing the capture of witches. Pressure is on people chose patriotism over religion.
Complex NPCs
Sheriff Hunk Griff. Stubbornly believes all adventures are either the heiress or are associated with her. He hopes he can be the one to capture her. He's tempted by a promotion! He despairs because he might be stuck in this post for his entire life. He thinks the opportunity to move up is now, and he fears he'll miss is opportunity.
-Trauma: Was made to feel powerless his entire lie.
-Shield: He seeks to feel powerful by making others feel powerless.
-Redeeming Qualities: He's brave, patriotic, and an accomplished veteran.
-Goal: He wants to promote
-Obstacle: He's stuck in this backwater town. The local Baron Coalemblem, has it out for the Sheriff and won't reassign him somewhere where he can thrive.
Sheriff Griff is the personification for Count Gargalad (faction) in small scale. Sheriff Griff is the law here.
Inquisitor Patrick Matthews, lives within the local branch of the Church of Saint Angelo (faction). Inquisitor Matthes is pious and devout, and as an inquisitor is studied in ways of catching a witch, all of them are bad. He fears witches and the spread of magic. He is tempted to see people as witches more and more. He despairs that witchcraft is on the rise now that the heiress is gaining notoriety. He hopes that she will be captured soon.
-Trauma: Saw too much hardship and lost his faith.
-Shield: Thinks he just needs to believe harder.
-Redeeming Qualities: Compassionate and Wise. Believes in taking care of people.
-Goal: Keep the village safe from witches and witchcraft.
-Obstacle: He currently suspects the local florist, Heather. He thinks her knowledge of plants resembles a witch. He doesn't want to act on suspicion alone.
Inquisitor Matthes is the face of the church here, and he'll be quick to get involved if there's any hint of the heiress appearing.
Simple NPCs
-Deputy Leonard Cooper is often mistreated by the sheriff and other deputies because he's clumsy and dim-witted. He knows Sheriff Griff's weaknesses (his trauma and shield) and will willingly reveal these to anyone opposed to the sheriff. Deputy Cooper is kind to the villagers, and they trust him over the harsh, strict, an sometimes mean-spirited Sheriff. If the players ally with Deputy Cooper, they gain the confidence of the villagers.
-Deputy Donald Folk is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He thinks Sheriff Griff is a blow-hard and a buffoon. Just when the Sheriff is on the cusp of his goal, Deputy Folk and the other deputies will betray the sheriff and capture the characters.
-Edward Griff, the outfitter. His son has been conscripted. His work and earnings have diminished because the conscriptions affected his customer base.
-Heather, the florist. She is blissfully ignorant that the inquisitor thinks she is a witch, but the discover would horrify her.
Conflict Seeds, Trigger Events, Pressure Points, Opportunities, Obstacles, and Choices
This is the place and the people here. It's small but dense. Read it for the gist. Rely on improv. To make this playable, you need to seed conflict to hook the players, then you need to trigger the conflict. Hit pressure points to escalate tension. Allow players to find Opportunities (offer some through NPCs). Provide Obstacles. The players will make choices.
Conflict Seeds (hooks):
1. A player-facing conflict see. Tie the PCs personally to the world. Examples:
-One PC resembles the heiress.
-One PC is related to someone conscripted.
-One PC is secretly magical.
-One PC is from Gargalad.
-One PC carried a letter, relic, or rumor about the heiress.
You don't need to choose the seed; You need to ask the players during character creation "what personal details ties you to the world of Loria?" Choose or make a seed that fits.
2. A trigger event; a small emotional scene showing the players that the world notices them. It encourages them to think "what's going on?"
-The Sheriff stops the PCs at the gate.
-A deputy says he recognizes a PC as “the heiress.”
-Heather begs the PCs for help.
-Edward Griff collapses from exhaustion.
-A conscription notice is posted.
-A Church rider arrives with orders.
-A villager whispers: “They’re looking for you.”
The trigger event must be small, personal, emotional, and unavoidable.
3. Pressure points. Scenarios, not plot beats or story events, that the GM can add to escalate tension, reveal NPC wounds, and pressure players to respond meaningfully. They show the players that the world is pushing on them. It encourages them to think "we have to deal with this."
Pressure Point 1: Sheriff Griff’s suspicion
-He interrogates the PCs.
-He tests their story.
-He tries to assert dominance.
Pressure Point 2: Inquisitor Matthes’s fear
-He warns the PCs to keep in line.
-He asks probing questions.
-He tries to protect the village.
Pressure Point 3: The villagers’ desperation
-They beg for help.
-They offer rumors.
-They turn on each other.
Pressure points give the GM scenes, not scripts.
4. Opportunities for the PCs to act. It might help you to think of a few so that you know the problem has some solutions, but this is the player's job. Your NPCs can offer suggestions.
-Gain the villagers trust
-Undermine the Sheriff's authority
-Influence Inquisitor Matthews
-Protect Heather from Suspicion
-Exploit Rivalry
-Learn the truth about the heiress
-Hide or disguise a PC who resembles the heiress
-Help Edward Griff with his conscription grief
-Discover the Baron's feud with Sheriff Griff
-Expose Deputy Folk's treachery
5. Obstacles that the players face as the world reacts
-Sheriff Griff’s shield (dominance)
-Inquisitor Matthes’s fear
-Villager desperation
-Faction pressure
-Scarcity and hardship
-Rumors and misinformation
-The wound itself distorts behavior.
-Heather’s ignorance
-Cooper’s clumsiness
-Folk’s ambition
6. A final choice. Bright-Dark adventures end with a choice, not a victory. Examples:
-Do the PCs help Heather or expose her?
-Do they support the Sheriff or undermine him?
-Do they protect the heiress or deliver her?
-Do they side with the Church or the Count?
-Do they flee Little Seraphim or stay to help?
-Do they reveal their secret or hide it?
The choice must be personal, emotional, irreversible, and human-scale. This is the final scene.
What if Players Flee Little Seraphim Immediately?
This would spoil the adventure. Don't stop players from leaving. Make it part of the pressure. Make leaving inconvenient, suspicious, costly, emotionally complicated, socially dangerous, narratively meaningful. Hit the trigger scene right away. Go to the pressure points quickly.
What Does Completion Look Like?
This is not a linear adventure about defeating, exposing, or saving anyone. It's a pressure cooker with multiple exits, loyalties, and emotional outcomes. The adventure is over when the PCs make a meaningful choice that breaks the pressure in one direction and change the status of Little Seraphim. They can do by this defeating, exposing, or saving anyone.
They don't need to do everything. They just need to reach a human-scale resolution to the tension in Little Seraphim. The PCs can choose to side with the people, the church, or Gargalad. Examples:
-Deliver Heather to the church
-Help Sheriff Griff capture a suspect
-Protect Heather
-The PC's flee but with consequences
-Expose Deputy Folk's treachery to the sheriff
Rewards
Completing the adventure is a milestone. The players may improve their characters. Additionally, give them a new story hook based on the outcome. This can look like a clear opportunity or obstacle elsewhere, a clue in a mystery, a direction for the players to settle up with their wounds.
DESIGNER NOTES
Meet This Game Half-Way
Managing expectations in TTRPGs is the biggest obstacle. Some games try to set a tone by creating a specific setting. This can help manage expectations, but the downside is you can get a world that's too specific and doesn't have strong appeal. Those games seldom explicitly frame tone as the goal. As a consequence, even though a game might be urban fantasy noir, you still have players showing up with caricatures or parodies rather than characters, and their habits and expectations as hobbyists and genre enthusiasts carry over.
My goal was to create a game that I might want to run or play. I discovered along the way that meant I was going to have to teach people not just how to play it, but also how to think about it and how to feel about it. I didn't see that coming. Bright-Dark 3d6 Role-Playing Game reinforces tone through mechanics but does not enforce it with rules. I am setting the bar for tone a little high hoping that you try to meet it half-way but are not driven away.
"It's Part of the Fiction, not the Rules"
This is the logic that simplifies aspects of the rules. I didn't think of this idea myself, but I took it. It's a brilliant way to explain something that some of us already do, and by phrasing it so elegantly, it becomes a tool. I use this logic in a few places in this game, conditions and status effects for example, and the crap in your adventuring backpack.
Beginner Friendly?
I'm not stupid. I recognize this may not be beginner friendly and it may be niche. I suspect you need emotional intelligence, subtlety, and nuance, and plain interest in a game about that. Further, this is a game that de-emphasizes if not removes loot and experience, things that typically reward participation and investment. And uh, power scaling is a bit limited. Some people call that bad design. Others call it light gate keeping. Make a niche game, get niche interest.
Why 4d6 Drop the Highest/Lowest Matters
4d6 drop the lowest/highest is not intended to be a trivial mechanic for simplifying stacking situational bonuses. For that, use the Situational Modifiers rule in the core mechanics instead. Rolling 4d6 and dropping the lowest die subtly encourages players to grow in depth rather than breadth. On a standard 3d6 roll, the chance of a critical hit (a natural 17-18) is 1.85%, but with 4d6 drop lowest, that rises to about 6.9%, nearly four times more likely. Also, the bell curve shifts! This doesn’t make characters superhuman; instead, it makes moments of mastery feel earned, and it makes a Light Bonus, a moment of hope, courage, or kindness, feel rewarded. A rare, powerful talent that grants 4d6 drop the lowest feels like someone who has honed a craft to a razor edge. Specializing deeply creates meaningful, reliable advantages. Likewise, spending 1 Stamina to roll 4d6 drop the lowest makes Stamina feel valuable and emotionally charged: a resource you spend when you must succeed. These mechanics reinforce niche protection, reward commitment, and support Bright-Dark’s tone of grounded competence shining through a wounded world
Low Numbers Are Faster and More Meaningful
When you have 10-20 hit points and everyone is rolling 1d6 for damage, every hit feels like it matters. Other RPGs have scaling problems. Think about having 88 hit points and rolling 8d6 damage. Bigger numbers of hit points are less intuitive for our lizard brains. More damage dice means more rolling and counting. This slows the game down. "It's OK, I still have 60 hp" is metagaming, but it's not as bad as the real problem that massive pools of health spoil tension and abstracts damage too much. If you stab a creature for 2d6, is it stabbed or is it missing only a few hit points?
Capping hit points low means damage as a way of abstracting wounds and injuries stays grounded. Fewer damage dice mean faster resolution. Some hits might not hurt that bad. Some might hurt a lot. You can tell right away because the remainder is lower than you want and it makes you feel unsafe. Restrictions to recovering health (1 per day) means the wounds matter more. Healing is not trivial; it takes time or resources. It supports emotional stakes and human-scale stories. It keeps the mechanics simple, fast, and flexible for players and especially for GM.
Reaction Rolls / Morale Checks
Please, please, please use these mechanics! Reaction rolls make first-time encounters with an NPC unpredictable. That is the point. It randomizes one aspect people in the world. Morale checks are very important for portraying NPCs as characters who don't want to die. These rules mean that the GM does not prepare the story, the story emerges.
Loot and Progression
The lizard brain wants shiny things. Gamer brains want that feeling of growth and progression, and loot is sometimes a part of that. Unfortunately, this is antithetical to Bright-Dark. No bookkeeping or resource management. Players can't have whatever equipment their character wants, but they can have whatever equipment their character needs. The 3d6 roll-over system limits power scaling so that the upward cap is very low. Participants have to be open to accepting lore as loot, or a good reveal. Secrets that lead to more are treasure. Character growth is emotional, social, or intellectual, not power.
Talents
A pool of feats and features that are de-coupled from race, background, or class. Choose one at the start. You can revisit it at character improvement. If you already have a talent and you want to improve it by one step (from a +1 to a +2, or from a +2 to a 4d6 drop the lowest) you can. Talent choices should suit the fiction or you spoil the fiction. "Wait, when did you learn magic? Off-screen?" That's disappointing. Finally, there's a cap on the number on talents so you don't have ten or twenty. This keeps them special. If you want to DIY, you can. It's encouraged. But I think I got everything. The game is not about mechanical social interaction, so talents that describe social traits (speech, mercantile, reading people, animal handling) are a no-no. Similarly, I reject a talent idea that made someone competent at figuring out an urban setting. Players should be familiarizing themselves with towns through exploration, not asking the GM "does my character know the answer to this problem?" or "can I roll to solve this problem?"
Equipment
A decision was made to ignore conventional equipment rules. Bright-Dark's tone is not about resource tracking, bookkeeping, or encumbrance. Instead, we say "you start off with that" or "you arrive at a new settlement and you find things you need" or "you are able to forage that". Let's face it, many of you probably run your games with very loose equipment mechanics anyway. Now we just hand wave it. If you want it in your game, you can add it as a plug-in. It shouldn't hurt.
Magic
I love magic, but magic needs to be limited to feel special. Within the fiction, if everyone has magic, it's not extraordinary, it's ordinary, and that's lame. Within the game, too much magic means players have too many solutions to the game's challenges. That's more work for the GM. I believe I fixed the problem with magic within the fiction at least. Characters get one theme. That's it. Maybe they get a second theme if the story goes on long enough. This makes them more like mutants from X-Men or like benders from Avatar.
Which attribute do you use for magic? I left that up for the GM and the players. This invites participants to flavor their setting or character, not the game telling them what their choices are. I tell you enough.
Alchemy
Alchemy is like magic but with some restrictions to distinguish it from magic. "Fantasy Science" as broad theme, but the trade-off is limitations on what is at-hand right now. Alchemists shine in preparation. No bandolier of flasks. Instead, you are the pragmatic scientist of the group with a small field kit comparable to a medicine bag.
Adventure Prep
Adventures are character driven, not plot driven. You don't need to put a lot of effort into this and you don't need to stress. Three ingredients: Player Goals, Stakes, and Antagonists. Just have conversations with the players. Ask what their characters want and what happens if they fail. Ask if they have an antagonist in mind; this is for inspiration only. At the end of the day, the antagonist is a GM character.
No Social Mechanics
This game relies on resolving social confrontation through roleplay rather than mechanics. Conversations are had, not simulated, and outcomes are not resolved by rules, they're resolved by the player creativity, effort, and curiosity. Speech does not need to be a stat to be balanced against other stats. Conversations don't need to be codified or mechanized. Rolling for speech has several effects. 1. It discourages player participation. Players with poor speech stats tend to let the players with good speech stats to the talking. 2. It can make the outcome of the scene feel contrived or forced. 3. It punishes player effort and discourages player creativity by making them roll with bad characters stats even when they make really good speeches. 4. High speech rolls can take agency of GM characters away from the GM similar to a magical condition that effects will or the mind.
Animal Companions
You don't need mechanics for animals. Have you ever had a pet? They have an attitude or temperament. They're either open to you or they're not. You can warm up to them with time, familiarization, and food, but you can't roll dice and make them your best friend. If they're already a trained animal or pet, they're reliably friendly or useful. If it's wild, then it depends on the animal, but most are not. If in doubt, use Reaction Rolls for their attitude, use Morale Checks if there's danger. Boom.
Player Agency
Players make choices, then the GM reacts. The world reacts and the NPCs react to player character choices. There is no right solution to a problem, only their solution. The game relies on improv. When players get really invested, the GM sets up the scenario, but the players take charge of what happens next and puts the GM on the backfoot. That's fun.
This also needs to be said. There are no rules and mechanics to roll dice and tell the players how they or their characters feel. That's cheap. Only magical effects can do that. If you can't make the players feel a certain way, then the effect of a scene or situation that is intended to evoke feelings has simply not worked.
No Pausing the Movie to Talk About the Movie
This is a principle of Bright-Dark. People show up to play, not to talk about playing. Embody your character. You're in this scene. Here's what's around here. Here are the stakes. What do you do? That's it. Don't ask about the rules. Don't ask about how the GM will make a ruling. You are the character right now. What would they do? Describe it.
