DREICH
[driːx]
Chronicle
DREICH is about people the sea will not let back, and the land will not let move on.
The Armada made us scouts. We’re first-comers, meeting a world that isn’t like ours. We go where not everyone comes back from. We bring back devices that break the laws of physics. We meet things that shouldn’t exist. And sometimes we see patterns hiding in the treetops and in the walls of fog. And then we catch up with the Chained City, drifting on without us. Because the mist sometimes keeps something of the scouts for itself. And if a partner starts answering someone else — better not ask who.
A hundred ships from four world alliances broke through the Wall of the Eternal Storm to stake a claim on the land beyond it. Thirty survived. Now they’re chained together into one floating city, drifting along the coast of an unknown continent.
For a year now the Council of Captains has argued about what to do next, while the holds empty and the fuel runs low.
We weren’t chosen for our merits. A debtor from the Conglomerate’s oil rigs. A deserter from the Iron Comradery, facing execution. A fanatic of the Bastion, grown in labs. A talented engineer of the Union, who knew too much. Four alliances with different goals and different worldviews now split the fresh water and diesel between them, drifting past a mainland that still hasn’t answered.
At night, foreign lights sometimes burn. On the rocks there are carvings left by the locals, and no one understands why.
DREICH is a tabletop role-playing game built on a d100 roll-under system.
What are we willing to sacrifice to claw out one more day?
Features of the system
- Making a skill check? Attacking? Being attacked? You roll the dice. The game master barely touches them.
- There are no classes, only 8 characteristics, which in different pairings describe skills, abilities, defense, and almost everything our characters need.
- The system invites us to extend and adapt it during play. The skill list is deliberately incomplete and condensed, so we invent new ones on the fly. No lockpicking skill? We work out which characteristics help us right now.
- A single d100 roll in combat decides both the hit and the damage. Rolled a double? That’s a critical.
- Combat happens in zones, not grid cells. There’s no need for a battle map: it’s enough to know who is in which zone.
- Characters don’t gain levels for kills. They grow through Marks: traces of what they have lived through, carved into their characteristics little by little, every session.
- Part of our backstory is built during play: who we were before the Armada comes out when it becomes a matter of life and death.
- Despair is a shared pool for the whole group. A vote can reroll dice, but every reroll adds a point of despair, and a failed one cuts the maximum ceiling. Raising it again takes a selfless act. We can always reroll; the only question is how much despair the group can still take.
What you need to play
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I
The quick-start rules for DREICH(in development).
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II
A set of d100 dice, or 2d10.
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III
One of the pre-generated characters.
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IV
A pencil.
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V
And most importantly, a game master and 2-5 players.