Introduction

How To Play

This section is an excellent start if one has never played a Tabletop Roleplaying Game.

In the most basic of terms, Quantum State is played by a group of people talking to each other—that is the bulk of the game. The Docent sets up an environment, the players interact with that environment, and the Docent dictates the effects of that interaction, typically resulting in a new or changed factor in the setting. That is what you can expect to be doing when playing Quantum State.

It may help to think of each time a group gathers to play, also called a Session, as another chapter of a book or an episode of a favorite series (starring the players), in which a cast of Characters work together as a Company to achieve their goals and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Getting Started

Before playing, the table ideally needs to have a pre-game meeting, often called a Session Zero, to set the expectations of what everyone would like to experience in the game. Should the game focus more on roleplaying or combat? Stealth or intrigue? Are there any subjects, topics, or content that is not acceptable to cover? What kind of setting or environment would the group be most interested in exploring? Make sure to communicate every player's needs with the rest of the group. This time is also a good opportunity for all players to create their Character Sheets, as they can lean on each other for advice and develop a better connection with each other as a team.

Once the table understands what to expect from each Session, the Docent can plan a Campaign or an overarching plot involving the Company and the world they inhabit. Each Session should pit the Company against new challenges to overcome, testing the Characters' mettle against Quantum State’s dangers.

Keeping A Character Sheet

To determine how effective your Character is at interacting with the environment, in the different ways that the environment can be interacted with (as detailed in Quantum State: The Adventure Guide), a player requires the quantification of their Character’s physical and mental capabilities. This handbook predominantly serves as a guide on creating and maintaining a Character Sheet to successfully grow and enhance a Character as they gain levels from their experiences in the world of Quantum State.

Follow the guidelines in this text to establish the qualities that make up your Character, including their Birthrite, Base Classes, Attributes, Perks, Equipment, and Heroics. Once selected, the player can calculate their Character Sheet based on their selections. With a set of completed Character Sheets, the table will have half of what they need to play.

The Dice Set

The last thing a player needs is a set of polyhedral dice. Quantum State is a D10 System, meaning that most of the actions performed require rolling a 10-sided die (D10) to determine the outcome of the attempt. A player uses a D10 to roll for almost anything other than inflicting Damage or restoring Hit Points. Other Polyhedral Dice sizes will be required to play, including a D4, D6, or D8. Players primarily use these dice to roll for Damage and healing effects.

A player can use actual physical dice, a digital dice roller, or any other dice rolling method when playing Quantum State; just be sure to clear your process with the Docent before playing for transparency. Once properly armed with a Character Sheet and a dice set, the players are ready to start making some mistakes.

Gameplay

Once the game has started, the Docent sets a scene by describing the environment, any Non-Player Characters and their actions, and where the players’ Characters are within the setting, providing any crucial details about the history, setting, or story for the players to build off of when they are roleplaying. With their positions in the setting confirmed, the players can act out the scene through their Characters, roleplaying and interacting with the environment established by the Docent. Depending on how the players interact with the scene, the Docent describes the results of their actions and introduces new factors into the environment, typically resulting from the players’ actions.

Dice Rolls

Often, a player attempts to utilize specialized skills or knowledge to accomplish a task. These attempts result in the Docent requiring the player to make an Ability Check. The player is then required to roll a D10 and add the result to the corresponding statistic on the player’s Character Sheet. The Docent weighs the result against a goal to determine success.

If the player’s attempt meets or exceeds the established goal, then the attempt is successful. If the player’s attempt fails to meet the goal, then they do not find success, despite their greatest efforts. Depending on the context of the endeavor, the results of an Ability Check can have various degrees of success or failure, with a range of severity in consequences, up to and including the death of a Character.

This chain of Actions→ Rolls→ Consequences makes up the game's basic flow, with the players and the Docent alternating between declaring actions and rolling the appropriate dice, then reacting to the roll results.

Growth & Change

As the Company begins to clear multiple challenges across Sessions, the Docent grants the players a Character Level, enabling players to enhance and grow their Characters as a milestone to mark their development. Characters grow in experience, power, and ability while gaining access to lofty realms of specialization and skill. In addition, they gain access to rare and powerful equipment and develop their talents throughout the Campaign, facing more critical challenges and complex problems as they flourish.

The Structure of Adventure

Players and Docents are often only as limited as their imaginations. However, it helps to categorize the ways that Characters can interact with the environment.

Exploration

Exploration is defined as any freeform action between a player and the environment. Exploring is the focus on discovering the characteristics and inhabitants of one’s surroundings. These actions often depend on a player’s ability to perceive and move around their environment, such as when walking, climbing walls, piloting a ship, or any other form of navigation.

Exploration does not typically require much roleplay beyond a description of an action sequence. It usually ends with a player moving their Character or performing an Ability Check to traverse their surroundings. Most of the time spent maneuvering from one place to another can be considered exploration.

Interactions

Social encounters and other interactions are everyday occurrences during an adventure, with players relying on their wits and cunning to achieve their goals without using overwhelming force. Social interactions typically rely on a player’s ability to roleplay, utilizing their Character’s Ability Checks to navigate and influence the complicated situations in their surroundings. Interactions that involve roleplaying typically have the Docent assuming the role of a Non-Player Character.

Other interactions can focus on technical capabilities, requiring Characters to meet goals through Ability Checks to accomplish them. These interactions allow players to use their trained skillset to change their surroundings or the Characters and objects within their vicinity. Docents always have the option to award stellar player performances and innovative ideas with favorable results.

Combat

For those times when there is nothing left to say, the Docent begins the enforcement of the much less free-form Combat rules with the all-familiar call:

Roll Initiative!

Combat involves players and Non-Player Characters getting violent with each other, using Heroics, swinging weapons, and firing guns while ducking for cover and strategizing a counter-attack. The culmination of excitement and often a resolution (or birth) of conflict, combat is the representation of battle with strict rules and outcomes. Combat is more structured than exploration or interactions, with each Character taking turns and having limited actions available for each Round. Even in battle, adventures can still interact with objects and other Characters or examine and explore the environment.

Players can find a more in-depth breakdown of the flow and rules for adventuring in the companion book Quantum State: The Adventure Guide.

Minor Rules

Always Round Down

Occasionally, a rule requires that a number be cut in half (½) to determine a result. As a rule, players always round down to the nearest whole number. The only exception to this rule is when you are restoring Hit Points. A half-point of Hit Point recovery is always rounded up.

Specific Over General

This book contains many sets of rules that dictate how any given scene plays out. The many Birthrites, Base Classes, and Hybrid Classes with Heroics and Class Features often change the standard ruleset for exploration, interactions, or combat. In terms of how the game is played, always rule in favor of a specific rule over a general rule.

Doubling Doubles & Multipliers

Select Perks, Class Features, and Heroics may allow a Character to double (*2) a result or statistic. Multiple “double” effects do not stack, instead acting as a multiplier, doubling, tripling, quadrupling, and so on for each iteration.

Tie-breaker

Another common occurrence is when a player’s roll meets the exact amount, matching the established goal. When trying to determine the results of a tie, keep the following in mind:

Favor the Defender

When a Character attempts to inflict harm on or influence another Character negatively, the defending Character is protected in the event of a tie.

Tests of Talent

Whenever making rolls that do not directly involve impacting another Character negatively, such as Ability Checks, if a player meets the goal exactly, it is considered the bare minimum of success, but still a success.

Magick & Technology

Depending on where (or when) an adventure takes place, magick or advanced technology may be a rare occurrence or could be widely accessible to the average citizen. However, the truly powerful wield capabilities of an astonishing magnitude, warping reality and bending the forces of the universe to their will.

Throughout the story, magick and technology are necessary tools and the key to surviving the harshest realities of this world. Without advanced curatives and medical technologies, such as Compound Lances, to provide sufficient healing, players may find survival challenging. In addition, technologies like the Omni Kit, Lumen Driver, or Matrix Controller can be pivotal for interactions with machines and digital systems in the environment. Without the support of magick or technology accessible to a Company, its survival chance drops to near zero.

In the lore of the Quantum State, magick is facilitated by a rare crystalline material called Æthercite. Characters with the Adept Base Class have innate magickal powers and carry an idol carved or embedded with Æthercite tuned explicitly to their spiritual essence, called an Æthercite Catalyst. Magick and technology are often a natural part of the story. Villains rely on them to facilitate their machinations. Comrades use them for protection or survival. Every Character who desires action or results can be tempted to use any magick or technology at their disposal. It's up to the players to use these tools to prevail.