What is a halbert?
A halberd (also called halbard, halbert or Swiss voulge) is a two-handed pole weapon that came to prominent use during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The word halberd is most likely equivalent to the German word Hellebarde, deriving from Middle High German halm (handle) and barte (battleaxe) joined to form helmbarte. – Halberd on Wikipedia
Halberts is a short and simple role-playing game taking a lot of inspiration from Traveller. When creating characters, roll 6× 2d6 for attributes, then learn skills by rolling dice on career tables. The more you roll on those tables, the more skills you get. However, with every roll you also need to roll on a twist of fate table. Thus, it’s a question of luck: whether you’ll get the skills you want, and whether you’ll be able to continue rolling before your character dies during character creation.
That’s why I don’t recommend players clicking around on the character generator until they get a character they like. Instead, make that fateful decision to keep rolling in order to get more skills, taking the risk to lose it all.
Character creation offers limited influence on the skills learned. This is why Halberts is a game where players roll with what fate has dealt them and try to make the best of it. For example, if you want to play a healer and keep rolling on the table of passive magic, you might still not learn the Healing skill. You have to like this kind of random influences.
Fights are hard because the three physical attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Endurance) are also your hit points. A hit deals 2d6 points of damage or more. When the first attribute drops to zero, you faint; when two attributes drop to zero, you’re mortally wounded and need a doctor or a healer and an infirmary… Quite a few characters will be out of action after the first round. You have to like this kind of harshness, too.
Since fights are so harsh, players usually try to avoid rolling dice.
The magic system is wide open and doesn’t offer more than a few keywords. The rest has to be negotiated at the table and somebody needs to write it down. We might imagine that Fire-3 allows wizards to cast fireballs like in D&D but it doesn’t say so. Perhaps you can do that with Fire-1. You have to like constructing and negotiating that magic system.
The game works quite well if players play powerful people in a region where other powerful people are competing for influence and relics. It’s less well suited for fighting monsters because fights are so harsh. In addition to that, there aren’t a lot of social skills. That’s because I don’t want to replace negotiating at the table with dice rolling. There’s Oratory, to convince a group of people with a single roll, or Diplomacy, to find fair settlements so that we don’t have to keep talking about it at the table. But on the individual level, there’s no Convincing, Lying, or Intimidating. In terms of Magic, there’s Charm, which I always describe as something revolting (at least after the fact).
Another thing that the game doesn’t have is price lists. There is nothing to purchase. Nothing at all. When you begin the game, you have the weapons you’re skilled in, maybe a dog or a horse, which you got as a reward. You cannot buy these things. Of course it’s easy to imagine that you might get a weapon, dogs, or horse from a patron, possibly as presents in exchange for services rendered or missions accomplished. Or you can loot a battlefield. If you need magic weapons, special items, price lists for castles and the like, you’ll have to write them yourself.
#RPG #Halberts #2d6
For a slightly different take, with more discussion of the referee side of things, see Knives.