Overlight: Role Playing Game

Overlight is a story-driven RPG. A rulebook, character sheet, pencil, and your favorite dice are all you need! Using these simple tools, and a bucket full of imagination, your party will embark on an epic shared adventure. Using your characters' skills and Chroma powers, you will be tested during your journeys. Here's how it works:

Virtues
For six of the seven Virtues, each character will have a Rating. This is expressed as one of a variety of polyhedral die. So one might have a Compassion Rating of D10. A very good rating! Each character will also select one of their Virtues to be their Core Virtue. This is mostly for storytelling and roleplaying purposes as it helps you to define what it is that motivates your character. While it will not have much bearing on the rules, it will influence which Chroma are available to that character.The Virtue of Spirit is an exception and is instead represented by a pool of points that can be spent for a variety of things, including Combat Maneuvers and channeling Chroma.

Skills
Your characters also have 17 different Skills, which have Ratings just like Virtues. One key difference is that while all Virtues have at least a D6 Rating, not all Skills will. You may be untrained in a specific Skill which is another way of saying that it has no current Rating. As a reminder when expressing the Rating for a Skill or Virtue, we'll be using a capital "D". We'll be using a lower case "d" when talking about the literal dice in your hand or being rolled.

Tests
Most of the gameplay is centered on something called a Test. There are a variety of different kinds of Tests, but the most basic of them is a Skill Test. A Test is performed by rolling a handful of seven dice. In most cases, three of them will come from one of your Virtue ratings, and three dice will come from one of your Skill ratings. You'll be looking for any die with a result of 6 or higher. This is called a success. So you'll be achieving between zero and six successes on most rolls. But you'll also be adding a single d4 called the "Spirit Die" to the Test. The result of this die will be evaluated differently depending on the sort of Test you are performing.

Chroma
Chroma are the mysterious abilities and powers that the Skyborn are able to manipulate to amazing effect. They are not an exact science, and as a result, sometimes a Skyborn might channel too much Overlight through themselves while using the Chroma. When this happens the Skyborn or the Chroma is said to have Shattered. Each Shattering will have a lasting effect on the physical or spiritual being of the Skyborn, and after too many Shatterings the Chroma will burn itself out, searing away that particular arrangement of virtuous pathways in the character's Spirit, leaving the character without the ability to channel that specific Chroma again.