(Press play for an audio version of the rules, read by Aaron Catano-Saez.)
Descriptors is a quick play narrative tabletop role-playing game. One of you is the narrator and one or more are the players, and you all work together to create a collaborative story through conversation and descriptive narration. If you’re a player, you’ll create a character who you will describe as they succeed or fail at actions taken in response to the situations presented to you by the narrator. When you’re the narrator, you create scenarios out of a loose series of possible locations and events, describe the setting and non-player characters (NPCs) which you bring to life by narrating them acting and reacting to drive the scenario forward. You’ll also act as a referee for the rules. Everyone collaborates in describing the outcomes of actions, making sure every success and failure is interesting, memorable, and leads to new scenes, or wraps up the transformational changes of each character’s story arc!
We call variants to existing rules and optional add-on rules Variations. These are often used to modify the game mechanics to better reflect certain special traits, circumstances, or items in a specific genre or setting. (An example Variation is shown in the section titled Failure!.)
Speaking of settings and genre, we refer to different detailed and ready-to-run settings as Realms. This highlights their individual unique aspects, as well as calling to attention that some Descriptors characters might be able move from Realm to Realm…
(We refer to “you” interchangeably when referring to the player or the character.)
Before You Begin
Before beginning play, you and your fellow players should collaborate on the genre and tropes you would like to use as the setting for your game session. As you do so, talk about the sorts of protagonists and antagonists you want to see at the heart of the story. You should come to a consensus on the sorts of themes and subject matter that will be present in play, and at the same time establish safety tools to ensure everyone is comfortable with this subject matter. Refer to Safety and Accessbility and talk through consent and procedures before starting the nitty-gritty of creating the characters and scenario.
Characters
Your character is made up of a descriptor and a number of adjectives. You may use a sample character found in the published settings or create one of your own by creating a descriptor of a noun or two, and then selecting four adjectives.
A character might be written like this:
Character Name, Descriptor – Adjective1, Adjective2, Adjective3, Adjective4
An example from an adventurous fantasy world setting might look like this:
Razmile, The Wizard – Cunning, Resourceful, Wise, Grumpy
Actions
When your character faces a challenge, you may spend one of your adjectives to succeed (see Success! below) or you may choose to fail and gain a new adjective called a setback (see Failure! below).
Normally a task only requires a single adjective to overcome, but games with larger player counts or particularly difficult challenges may require tough challenges. These are a sequence of multiple challenges, requiring multiple adjectives being spent all at once to overcome them successfully. Choosing to fail a tough challenge will only get you a single setback, however. (More on this under Tough Challenges & Combat, below).
Success!
Spending an adjective means you cross it off or erase it from your character’s list of adjectives, and you narrate what your character does, using the adjective in a sentence to describe how you succeed. “I’ll charm them with my Sharp looks” or “I’m Wise, and should be able to determine if they have a hidden agenda.”
Trigger Descriptor. Normally you narrate success based on the adjective you just spent. Alternatively, you may trigger your descriptor, which simply means you spend any one of your adjectives as normal for success, but describe the success in terms of your descriptor trait rather than the adjective used. The adjective is still spent and gone; you never spend your descriptor.
Failure!
When you choose to fail instead of overcoming a challenge, you gain an adjective chosen by the narrator, often suggestive of a negative connotation: this is called a setback. You may narrate your failure, but the narrator may veto or add additional context if it isn’t dramatic or interesting enough.
A setback is like any adjective and can be spent to overcome challenges in subsequent scenes, but only by triggering a descriptor. In this way, failure is perfectly okay because you gain an adjective! The scenario may no longer be going your way, but you can still rely on who and what you are at your core in order to overcome challenges.
Narrators: choose setback adjectives from whatever makes sense at the conclusion of the challenge, based on the player’s description of their failure. If it helps, have a few ideas predetermined as you dream up your scenes. Great setbacks include Weak, Sickly, Delirious, Hurt, Bruised, Stressed, Confused, Broken, and so on. Consider both physical and emotional states.
Players: really ham it up and play those setbacks! This is your chance to sell your character being beaten down, emotionally volatile (or drained), and running out of luck. When next you succeed, it will taste all the sweeter as your overcome these setbacks to pull off a cinematic comeback!
Variation: Characters may only have a limited number of setbacks before being taken out for a scene (see Out!, below). Typically, this would be 3 setbacks. In the next scene, the character loses one setback of the Narrator’s choice, showing how they have recovered somewhat.
This is an exception to the normal Out! rule in which you awaken with a single setback; you remain one failure away from being taken out again, until you can do something within the game’s fiction to recover other setbacks.
Tough Challenges: Combat & High Stakes
Any type of physical aggression or high stakes challenge as defined by the narrator is called a tough challenge. Getting into a fight is the most common one. Other types of tough challenges might include long chase sequences, a multi-part security system, weaving through a horde of zombies, piloting through an asteroid belt, and so on. Even if you succeed (by spending an adjective), you will lose another adjective of your choice: this represents the accidental scrapes and bruises people take in a fight, or the physical or emotional strain of a prolonged or especially dangerous, unrelenting situation. Succeeding thus costs you two adjectives! It is best to reserve tough challenges for truly climactic scenes, or around scenes when there are opportunities to replenish adjectives (see Locations & Fishing, below).
Out!
If you run out of adjectives as a result of being faced with tough challenges, you are out of commission, unable or unwilling to cope with any more challenges. You will wake up at a dramatically appropriate later time with only a single setback, such as Injured or Sore, or something reflecting your emotional state, such as Frustrated, Depressed, etc.
Remember: you never spend your descriptor trait, but you cannot trigger it if you don’t have any adjectives.
Locations & Fishing
Every location has a refresh number: this is a number of adjectives you may pick up in a location, typically 0 to 3.
To fish for a new adjective, announce you are doing so and use an adjective you desire in a sentence to describe the scene or an action your character makes. The narrator will reward you that adjective and let you know if any more are available. Note you may only have one of each adjective at a time, so if you are already Clever, you must fish for an adjective other than Clever.
Puns and synonyms are encouraged; what you gain from fishing doesn’t strictly have to be used as-is. If you pick up a “sharp” knife and write Sharp on your character sheet you may intimidate someone with words for your “sharp” tongue, or dress to impress because you look “sharp.”
Advancement
A game session ends once the scenario feels complete. If your character will continue on in future scenarios, they begin the next session with whatever adjectives they had at the end of the last one. You can pick new adjectives until you have up to 4 total. If you have more than 4 at the end of the session, great! Keep them, but don’t pick any new ones.
On Variations & Realms
As previously mentioned, we call variants to existing rules and optional add-on rules Variations. There are many in Descriptors: Definitive Edition, alongside advice and examples. You will find Variations that provide mechanics for:
- equipment
- magical items
- spells
- new character traits
- new uses for adjectives and/or setbacks
- different rules for determining what situtations can take a character out
- special rules for dealing with unique threats in a specific setting
- new adjudication methods, such as using dice for certain activities
Additionally, you will find new Variations in BETA development here. As they receive feedback and playtesting, they will be refined, expanded, and published in future releases on their own, or as an integrated part of a new setting or scenario.
Speaking of settings and scenarios, we refer to different detailed and ready-to-run settings as Realms. These often come with some or all of the following:
- scenario ideas
- guidance and inspiration for specific types of thematic or iconic scenes
- a handful of pregenerated characters to help you jump right into playing in the setting
- Variations to help model the tone, setting elements, or inspire ways to build your own settings
You can find five Realms in Descriptors: Definitive Edition, and there are others in supplements like Descriptors: Realms Volume 1. We provide new Realms in the early stages of development here as Ashcan releases. That means they have received playtesting and work great, but sometimes beg for additional Variations, or include subtle (or even drastic) changes to how Descriptors can be played. One example is Descriptors: I Mean Business, a custom-built version of the Descriptors system that focuses on high-stakes 1-on-1 relationship drama. It adds a relationship mechanic and changes how setbacks work. Like the Variations in BETA testing, any Ashcans that prove popular and receive feedback will be expanded with additional options and guidance to be published in future releases in a finalized and expanded form.
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