Taur
A downloadable game
Five hundred years ago, the Aislan Empire built a tower as tall as the heavens. It was the last thing they did. As the tower neared completion, a month of storms settled over the heart of their power. Fire and lightning rained from the skies. Sorcerers went mad and soothsayers entombed themselves alive. The empire was undeterred. As they laid the final stone the heavens cracked, and evil came pouring out.
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Taur is a 23 page tabletop roleplaying game in which your success is not in doubt---how much damage you will take in the process of achieving your goals is.
Every check in Taur damages you. When you rest, the world advances.
But if you're brave, you get hurt less.
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Updates:
- 6/6/25: Clarified resting's impact on the state of play.
- 6/8/25: Updated rules redux to match resting clarification.
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Comments
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A strong but flexible post apocalyptic fantasy setting, using simple but motivating / forward propelling mechanics. Fun multi classing rules, too! Reminds me of "the Tower of Babel" and "The Sharing Knife" while being it's own thing.
My only beef is that resting up to full HP allows "all other factions and foes to advance their plans", which is a great concept for a bunch of reasons, but there's no further guidance. That's an amazing range under GM arbitration without any textual insight - what's a fair number of Threat Clocks to be running simultaneously, how much of A Big Deal should each be, how many segments per, etc. It's a huge component in the equation that determines how friendly or difficult or oppressive the system is to the PCs. Seeing it unaddressed struck me as a possible oversight.
But again, pretty cool, and I think a GM that runs a few sessions at a localized level with just a handful of major players could get a feel for how assertive to be with how many plots to keep up in the air at a time (and how strongly they leap forward when the players take downtime).
This is good feedback!
Re: factions and foes advancing their plans, I actually don't click with threat clocks too much, so I left this one really loose. It's not meant to be "everything on the board needs to act," it's more "whatever feels relevant advances its plans." I'll update the text to clarify this.
The new text seems to carry your intent a little clearer. Page 21, the recap of the rules, still has the old phrasing.
Heck. Good catch. New revision should be up in a few minutes.
Fixed!