Vault Peddlers’ core rules are free to download, so we can’t use DriveThruRPG’s best-seller badges to estimate how popular they are. Downloads have to cost a minimum amount to qualify.
However, at the time of writing, there’s been several star ratings for the ruleset introduction to the Electric Baroque of the Post-Post Collapse, and the system is rating highly.
It is the dice pool system that the core rules for Vault Peddlers introduce and character generation, including the caravans that the PCs belong to.
However, the introduction text gives an idea of the new baroque.
The Old World is Dead…
Consumed by avarice, division and calamity. Where once the Glittering Courts stood resolute – lauding over the collapsing systems below, now a wildness and Quickreef have taken root; subsuming off the edifices of the past.
And while for many in the untamed valleys of Eba uncertainty is the rule, there are those that do not confine themselves to the emergent structures of the post-post collapse. There are those who have looked to the dangers beyond the secure city walls of Ishtas, Orod and Vigil and found a glint of opportunity.
Vault Peddlers.
Miscreants, vagrants and degenerates, all. Favored by the fortune they are so bold to go out and take. Some say they provide our new landscape with the resources it so desperately needs to continue its growth into the unknown.
Still others see them only as thieves and profiteers, willing to leave a blighted ruin in their wake for the promise of a simple Petty Coin.
The truth, as in all things, is found somewhere in between. Because when the stars shattered and the First Machines pulled themselves up from the sunken places of Eba, two things made themselves abundantly clear:
Fortune favors the bold and nobody makes it out alone.
Keep your eye to the Golden Road, Peddler…
We’ve Contracts to Keep.
The six Specie that PCs might belong to are also indicative of the flavour of the setting.
- Humans; survivors of the old world… with some new features.
- Pollutar; sentient beings formed from the waste of the old world.
- Embrophytes; sentient (and humanoid) plants.
- Tunnelers; technology from the old world that’s become sentient.
- Bulders; outsiders, and colonists visiting the world of Eba.
- A’rachae; evolved and sentient insect life.
The 45-page download also has how to play basics, the archivist notebook and TGS games have character sheets available from DTRPG and their site.
The publisher describes the game;
Vault Peddlers is a Traditional Tabletop Roleplaying Game with a light weight ethos. It’s simple resolution mechanic applies across all of the systems within it resulting in a robust and seamless play experience.
Players take on the roles of the titular Vault Peddlers. Treasure Hunters of Misfortune who utilize evolving polyhedral die pools, squad based tactics and collaborative ship building to take on dangerous contracts from the highest bidder.
Be it in the Raider sown wastes and ecological fallout of the Great Frontier or in the Gold Hewn Cities of the New Baroque, every job you take has the potential of being your last.
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