# What is Shillings? Shillings is a fast and simple token-based SRD made for everyone. This SRD is a design document for designers with aspirations to make something big but make something simple. It gives anyone the opportunity to make something amazing. To be completely honest I was originally going to make this for myself. It was gonna be for me and my friends. But then something clicked. If I made this for everyone: - A. People would have another SRD to use - B. I’d have a chance to see other people use my TTRPG tech - C. Everybody would be happy In terms of players 1 GM and 2-4 players is probably best for games made with Shillings. Another thing you will need is a _lot_ of tokens. So without further ado, welcome to Shillings SRD... # Core System Shillings uses a pool of tokens to resolve problems. The “classes” in the game all have a set of 3-5 Attributes, used to show how they approach these problems, not what they are attempting. More on that later. When a character is playing and there is a risk to what they are about to do, they pay tokens. The GM will secretly set a price for this action. This how many tokens the player has to pay to resolve this problem. You then find the attribute that is most relevant and if its value is that cost or higher you complete your action. But if you say you want to do an action and you don’t have a high enough attribute you fail and there is a consequence. Everybody can pitch in adding one to the players stat for every player that does pitch in. This is most of the gameplay works, here’s an example. > 💡 **Max is playing his character Steel,** and wants to push a guard into a wall. He decides he needs to use his body attribute. The GM decides his action costs 5 tokens. Max looks down at his attributes and see his has a 4 in body. The GM says the cost and he fails! The guard turns around and spots him. # Classes Classes in Shillings is a very loose term. In Shillings they are usually just there to wrap the characters up with a neat bow. Although, these are a necessary part of a Shillings game. Each class is made up of 4 (or 5) things. ## Health Each class has a set amount of health. If you haven’t played a videogame or TTRPG before this is a value that describes the character’s physical (or sometimes mental) well being. This is used to determine when you are wounded or dead. When a character dies they can pay a set amount of tokens to revive themselves. There will usually be a cap on how many times they can do this before the character is fully dead. This is to provide longer games for players who aren’t that well experienced with TTRPGs. You can remove this rule if you want. ## Current, maximum and starting tokens On a character sheet there will need to be somewhere to display a characters maximum and current tokens. This is just an easier way to see than just knowing it off by heart. The maximum token cap doesn’t necessarily have to be include but is helpful for control. A class will also need to show how many tokens they start the game with. This could be a representation of wealth, mastery or just be there for variety. Either way this a necessary part of Shillings games. ## Talents Talents are things a class is really good at. These could include dancing, hacking, running or anything in between. If a talent applies to a situation, you don’t have to spend any tokens on it. Talents are there so players don’t go broke _too_ quickly. You can set all of these by default or let players pick from a list for some of their talents. ## Attributes Each character has 3-5 attributes. These could be anything. Strength, Mind, Speed, Body, Combat or even Flexibility. These are here to describe how a character approaches problems. A general rule for making attributes is have one for body related things, speed and agility and brain related things. But you don’t have to follow these rules if you do not want to. How attributes work in the game is explained in the Core System section. # Combat ## Weapons In Shillings games characters can carry weapons. This is not necessary by any means but will probably be included in a lot of games. I’m going to explain how they work anyway. Weapons all have some sort of difficulty. The difficulty value is equal to the amount of tokens you have to spend to use it. The difficulty value could be called anything. Weapons will also need a name (obviously). And a damage value. This is how much health it takes from an enemy when they are attacked with it. If you wanted characters to start off with weapons you can make that so. Players can optionally carry multiple weapons. ## Enemies Enemies in a Shillings game will be the things that are there for you to kill. Each enemy will have a name and a weapon. The name is obviously the name. The weapons is a weapon just like the ones that the players carry. These will definitely be expanded on in later issues. ## In Battle Combat is a battle between the enemies and the players. It will start by each of the player doing something on their turn. This could be an action like jumping onto a nearby building where you would use the core system. Or it could be using a weapon by paying the right amount and selecting a target to hit. After each of the players has had a turn it goes over to the GM who also has a pool of tokens. They control the enemies and can use as many or as few as they want to attack. Then it will keep switching between players and enemies until one side is completely dead. If the players win they get rewards like weapons and tokens. # Session Structure The session structure of a Shillings game is usually like this. Introduction/Recap, Mission, Downtime, Finale. The Introduction/Recap is where you introduce the players or world. If this is a second session in a campaign, you will probably want to just recap last session. The mission is the main bulk of the session where you do your combat, exploration and have fun. There is downtime to prepare for the finale or you could have other downtime tech. The Finale is a big battle or quest to finish off the session for the players. You will usually gain epic loot after that. # Attribution Even though this is an SRD it is released under CC BY 4.0 which requires attribution to the creator. So all you need to do is put in this text: _This game is based off of the Shillings SRD by Lynxen RPGs. All logos and base tech of this game are properties made by him_ It is also nice to add my name or the system name on your page where you put your game.