Endure
A downloadable game
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Endure is a rules-light tabletop roleplaying game about ordinary people in extraordinary situations.
Explore stories of wilderness survival (in the style of Robinson Crusoe, The Martain, The Long Dark), survival horror (I Am Legend, Alien, Outlast) and anything in between (This War of Mine, Pathologic, and any kind of disaster event).
If you are looking for a game that lets players struggle through a crisis, this is a game for you!
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It started life as a hack of Nate Treme's Tunnel Goons for GoonJam 2019. I bolted an old idea for an "endurance" mechanic to it, and then it got a little out of hand. The end result centers around:
- Simple 2d6 Risk Roll system
- No HP to save your skin
- Streamlined resource management
- Player cunning
The system's focus is its Endurance economy. Endurance helps characters succeed and keeps them going, but is always depleting. If you are out of Endurance, you have to rely solely on your cunning and luck of the roll - and often it is not enough to survive. You need time and resources to recover Endurance, so the game ebbs and flows between tense action and quiet downtime.
I had a great time writing the game and (over)designing the looks of it. I hope you'll have as much fun if you play it!
Print copies available at:
Exalted Funeral & Melsonian Arts Council
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Changelog:
- Sep 5th '19 - fixed two typos, added no-background version
- Nov 21st '19 - Print Copies available!
Download
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Comments
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this is an AMAZING GAME! played it the other night as an 1800s antarctic expedition with some time travel elements and it went over so well (one of my players will now be running a texas based noir story with it), and i'm currently making a wild west hack of it, thanks for this wonderful game!
great game
Hi Fred :)
I absolutely love this game and have ran it a few times with some friends who, like me, are relatively new to RPGs in general. It made for a great 28 Days Later inspired short campaign! It would be great to link up with some other fans and play in some campaigns or adventures using this system!Is there
I'm running a campaign using a slightly modified version of this and if I can find one or two more groups to try it out I'll write it up and put it on itch. It's surviving a post ice cap melting world in the near future.
Hi Arran!
Is there any room for another person in your group for this? I'd love to be involved!
Hi it's quite far through the campaign now, but I'll be running another session in about a month in the same setting, but a more changed up system. If you want to know more feel free to ping me on discord arranrp
Hi Fred!
As I commented earlier, I love this game, and I have written an adventure module for it. I wanted to ask your permission to publish it here on Itch as soon as it is finished, and also, If I have permission, what you would like me to add in terms of crediting etc?
The "adventure" itself is finished, I only have the art and design left, as well as going over the text for errors or inconsistencies.
I'm honored and humbled that you want to publish an adventure for this little game. Of course you're free to do it - the game itself in under CC-BY license, so you just need to mention that it was made for Endure by Fred Bednarski somewhere in the pdf. A link to this itch page would be nice too, but not necessary.
...and not sure if you seen my response to your previous comment (it was a bit late :/) but feel free to make any changes to the rules to make your adventure play as you want it.
I originally planned to write some adventure modules on my own (but life got in the way and I haven't published anything in years) and have them pretty much self contained - adding all the mechanics needed into the adventure module itself. If that's something you'd like, so people don't need two pdfs - go for it.
Thank you, that sounds great. I will credit accordingly, with a link as well.
Yeah I read your last comment and I thought about it, but I went back to reading through the rules, and as I was designing the module, they just clicked. I think I get it more now. I just had to get the ingrained preconceptions of "combat rules" out of my head first :)
A question on spending Endurance and failing a DS roll:
It says in the ruels you may spend Endurance to add 1 to the roll. So far so good. Then, under Risk Roll, it says that when you try to "overcome" an obstacle, and fail, you reduce your Endurance by the difference failed. So far so good. However, does that mean that the ENdurance you spend to increase an action, is not drained on a success, but refunded? I am asking because it seems that endurance could be drained to 0 VERY quickly, if you spend to increase the roll, as well as lose even more on a fail.
Also, are there any "obstacle turns" in, lets say combat, where, for example, a zombie attacks you and you roll defense, or do you just simply "roll to overcome" until either you or the obstacle reaches 0? I would love some clarifications on things like combat turns, or at least some pointers how I would deal such a situation where, say, a group of 4 poeple are atatcked by 2 zombies/bandits/bears.
Glad you like the game.
The way I run it is that you don't get any endurance back on a failure - you loose it all: both what you spend AND the difference. This makes for pretty brutal games where players are forced to find ways to recover Endurance pretty often (this often leads to players changing goals to find a safe space and rest instead of proceeding).
I don't play with any "obstacle turns" - just swap focus between characters as it makes sense in the narrative. The enemies/obstacle doesn't get their own turn, they are a constant threat. So if two players approach a zombie, the zombie grabs one of them (ask the player to roll to avoid), then switch focus to the other player saying something around the lines "the zombie will bite into the first player's character neck, what do you do?) and so on.
Saying all that, this is how I play it, you are free to play the way you want. If introducing turns is more your style - go for it! If you or your players don't enjoy finding ways to recover Endurance in the middle of the action, feel free to give the spent Endurance back to the players :)
Hope that helps.
Really love this game! Very simple on the surface, but with possibilities to make the rules evry deep and engaging. Will def be playing this soon!
Nice game!
Thanks.
Love what you've done with the TG system. I think I would use this to play in a The Last of Us type of setting.
Is there a possibility of Print-on-Demand, since the title is no longer available via EF or MAC?
I just found this game, and oh wow is it exactly what I was looking for! Thanks a ton for making this!
Are there any online communities for Endure that anyone knows of? Like a Discord server for group play? I'm just checking before I try to set one up myself.
does anyone have any samples of their gameplay? I’m having trouble understanding how a combat encounter would work in this game. Help please.
Will more print copies be available?
hi there!
amazing work here!
any suggested character sheet?
Love the aesthetic
Very good job!
Thank you :)
Amazing work! I think you can run a Left for Dead scenario with it, but it doesn't stop there! Ordinary people vs Extraordinary situation captured in 16 pages.
Hi Fred,
I just translated your game in French.
http://www.jeepeeonline.be/2019/12/endure-version-francaise.html
For the moment, it's just a single PDF file without special layout but I intend to rework this to come up with something as good as your layout for the original game.
Thanks for your game
Merry Xmas + Happy New Year !
Regards
JeePee
I just bought a physical copy from Exalted, do I get an itch.io PDF copy as well?
Sorry if I'm dense and not getting it!
Thanks
You sure do!
Exalted should have sent you a link for it. If you didn't get it, send me an email or Twitter dm (both found in my bio on here) and we'll sort it out :)
I have ordered one from the chaps at Melsonian. Does the same apply with them?
This is one of the best RPGs I've read in months! The layout is superb, the rules are light yet very clever and the advice is spot-on. All it's missing to be perfect are a couple archetypes and a small scenario, but anyone who reads it will be quite capable of writing them on their own.
Amazing work!
Thanks a lot!
I was on the fence about adding more pages, but I think I will add them with a bit more advice and a small scenario with archetypes.Four more pages coming soon and then the print version soon after :)
I am really amazed and have send a link to my local RPG community to try it out. I am looking forward to more in different Genres and modules.
Thanks! Hopefully your club will enjoy it :)
A very cool and nice RPG. I'm talking about it on my blog (in French) http://www.jeepeeonline.be/2019/09/endure-survival-roleplaying-game.html
Thank you for a really nice write-up, I am glad you enjoyed it!
Let me know how it goes, if you end up running a game with it. I know you have Les Survivants du Grand Froid, which feels like a setting made for Endure! Also, it has amazing art and design - will read up more about it on your blog today - google translate permitting, because my French is basic at best. ;).
Seems like a french meeting room here : I'm translating your game in french for personal use !
Awesome! Let me know once you are done - I would be happy to add your French translation on here with my layout :)
Cool. In fact it's done, but I may have took some liberties, so I'll make a new reading, and inform you about the slight changes. Emojk agreed to check my work (we already worked on translation together). Just need a way of contacting you :)
You can find how to contact me on my itch.io page here: https://vonbednar.itch.io/ (I am doing it this way to have my email visible everywhere for spam bots to find it ;)