How to play Coriolis The Third Horizon. 

Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Coriolis The Third Horizon. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Coriolis The Third Horizon game at home.

I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.

1. 
   

   Game category

   
   


2. 
   

   Attributes and skills

   
   


3. 
   

   Icons

   
   


4. 
   

   Initiative

   
   


5. 
   

   Action Points

   
   


6. 
   

   Armor

   
   


7. 
   

   Critical success

   
   


8. 
   

   Distances

   
   


9. 
   

   Ranged combat particulars

   
   


10. 
    

    Reactions

    
    


11. 
    

    Movement and encumbrance

    
    


12. 
    

    Partial damage

    
    


13. 
    

    Zero hit points or mind points

    
    


14. 
    

    Darkness points

    
    


15. 
    

    Building a character

    
    

Game category. Coriolis is a tabletop roleplaying game set in space. You can crew a space craft, explore the horizon by traveling to new star systems through portals, unravel secrets such as who built the portals, plot and scheme with factions over power and influence, pray to the icons, and carry out missions. But beware the Dark between the Stars, an unspeakable corrupting force in the intersection between civilization and the endless nothing of space. All of the dice used for Coriolis The Third Horizon are six sided dice, also called d6. You roll the number of dice your character has in a specific skill. If one of your dice rolls a six, you succeed at what you were trying to do. Coriolis has well described combat rules that players who enjoy Dungeons and Dragons will find interesting.

Attributes and skills. Your character has four attributes: Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy. Each attribute has a few skills, which are ways you can apply that attribute during gameplay. The strength attribute has the skill of melee combat. The agility attribute has the skills dexterity, infiltration, ranged combat, and piloting. The wits attribute has the skills observation, survival, data djinn, medicurgy, science, and technology. The empathy attribute has the skills manipulation, command, culture, and mystic powers.

Every point you have in an attribute or skill gives you a six sided dice, also called a d6, that you can roll. For example your observation skill is two and your wits attribute is three, so you roll five dice total when you observe. If you roll all the dice but none of them show the number six, that roll was a failure. Read the skill’s failure text out loud for your game master to interpret. If you get one six on one dice, that means you succeeded. One six is a limited success, so you will read the skill’s wording out loud to find out how that specific skill is limited. For example it might take longer than expected or the information gained might be brief. Extra sixes beyond the first one give you cool bonus effects, which vary depending on which skill you used. You can exchange each extra six one for one for a bonus effect. If you roll three sixes, that means you got a critical success. Each skill has words explaining how a critical success is awesome and how you get an extra bonus because of the critical.

There are 16 possible skills you can put points in. Half are general skills and the other half are advanced skills. Anyone can roll a general skill, but you can’t roll for an advanced skill unless you have at least one point in it. One notable advanced skill is command, which can be used to heal a stressed out ally whose mind points have been depleted to zero. You can’t roll for command to help your friend unless you have at least one point in it.

Here is an example skill roll. The airlock is closing. Sabah tries to hurl herself towards the airlock to make it through before it closes. The Game Master calls for a dexterity roll to see if Sabah gets through the airlock or not. Sabah has one point in the dexterity skill and three points in the agility attribute, so that means she rolls four dice total. If zero of the four dice show a six, she failed, and the airlock closes before she can get through it. If any of those dice show a six, she succeeds and makes it through the airlock before it closes. If one dice shows a six, that is called a limited success. For the dexterity skill, a limited success is described as, quote, “Limited success: you manage to pull off the maneuver, but just barely.” End quote. Every extra six beyond your first might let you pick a bonus effect from the dexterity skill’s page, if it has bonus effects. Some skills do, some skills don’t. Dexterity doesn’t have any bonus effects for extra sixes, but the manipulation skill, for example, does. If three of the dice show sixes, that’s a critical success. For dexterity, the rule book says, quote, “Critical Success. You succeed with flawless skill, and you achieve some unexpected, positive side effect, like helping a friend or creating an obstacle for an enemy. The GM decides the details.” End quote. This example of a skill roll shows you that the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get a limited success, get bonus effects, and get a critical success.

Icons. If your skill roll isn’t successful, one option you have is to pray to the icons, if that’s a thing you want to do. Praying to the icons can only impact skill rolls, not combat rolls. It’s an instant prayer your character can do that doesn’t take any time out of your other actions. You simply declare that you’re praying to the icon associated with the skill you’re rolling, and you can re roll all your failed dice that weren’t sixes. The rerolled dice now might become successes. If you prepared a prayer to that specific icon beforehand earlier in the session, then praying to that icon not only lets you reroll failed dice, but you also get either a plus one modifier which means one extra dice, or if you prayed in that icon’s chapel, then a plus two modifier which mean two extra dice. Every time you pray to an icon, though, the game master gets one darkness point.

Let’s begin talking about combat rules by starting with initiative. Initiative means turn order. When combat starts, each player rolls one d6, and the game master rolls one d6 for each enemy or group of enemies. The number on the dice is the character’s initiative score, and sets the order that people act in the round of combat. People who rolled a six can take their turn before people who rolled a five, who can take their turn before people who rolled a four, who can take their turn before people who rolled a three, etc. If two people both have the same number, roll a second dice and the higher number goes first. After everyone has gotten to go once, that ends the round, and it’s time to start a new round in the same initiative order as before.

Raising and lowering initiative. There are wa