Legacy: Life Among the Ruins

Families

Unlike most games character creation in Legacy doesn't begin with the character themselves, but rather with their family (typically 20-30 people).  There are eleven "playbooks" (think classes) that can be used to create a family, ranging from The Cultivators of
New Flesh (farmers/tamers of nature) to the  Gilded Company of Merchants, to The Order of the
Titan (who battle and tame giant monsters that inhabit the wasteland).

Family Stats and Resource Tracks

Just like a character, each family has three "stats": Reach (influence in the outside world), Grasp (ability to hold onto their resources), and Sleight (their ability to hide secrets and misdirect others).

Also, similar to a character's hit points, a family has three resource tracks: Mood (overall wellbeing), Tech (accumulated technology), and Data (information about the world).

Other Family Details

To create their family the player also needs to decide on various role-playing aspects of their family, such as their doctrine, lifestyle, and traditions.  They also have to select their two family moves (most families have one fixed move, and then the player can choose from several optional moves for their second).

After that the player needs to determine relationships (and treaties) with other families, and both which resources they have in surplus, and which they need.  Finally, they determine the gear the family has that the player can use for their character.

Character Stats

With all that work to create the family out of the way, the player can then begin actual character creation.

Characters in Legacy have four stats: Force (fighting ability), Sway (charisma), Steel (withs/survival instinct), and Lore (knowledge of the strange devices found in the wasteland).

To select their stats a player chooses a stat array and then adds two +1 bonuses determined by their family.

Character Playbooks

Just as with families there are a variety (thirteen) different playbooks to choose from.  A character can be a Firebrand (ie. revolutionary), The Machine (a robot), The Remnant (a sort of mutant), etc.

Each playbook provides stat bonuses/penalties, two moves (again, typically one fixed and a choice of several others for the second), as well as starting gear and harm boxes (which are somewhat like hit points).

Role

Each character also needs to choose one of four roles: Leader, Agent, Rebel, or Outsider.  Each role gets a special, specific move when combined with different playbook.  For instance, a Firebrand Leader gets to specify where his forces will lay in ambush, when rising up against an oppressor, while The Remnant Leaders instead get to keep their family safe and fed when traveling through hostile ground.

Gear

Each family has a stockpile of gear, organized into six categories: Armoury (ie. weapons), Outfit, Vehicles, Companions, Intel, and Devices (pre-apocalypse tech).  Characters can equip themselves from this stockpile.

As a PbtA system Legacy: Life Among the Ruins, accomplishing most actions is as simple as saying "my character does ___".  However, when an action requires game rules, it becomes a "move".

Moves

Both families and individual characters can make (different) moves, and there are both standard moves that all players can take, and specific moves that only certain characters/families can take.

To make a move a player rolls 2d6 and adds their appropriate stat for the move to the result.  For instance, if a character was making a "defuse" move to deescalate a dangerous situation through physical intimidation they would add their "Force" stat to the roll, whereas if they wanted to talk their way out they would use their "Sway" stat instead.

On a 6 or less the character/family suffers some sort of setback: either the move fails, or it succeeds, but with a negative side effect.  On a 7-9 the action definitely succeeds, but with some form of (more minor) complication, and a 10+ is an unqualified success.

As a PbtA game Legacy doesn't have specific combat rules: there's no initiative, no battlemap, no combat rounds, etc.

Instead, whenever a character wishes to use violence to achieve an end, they simply make a "Fiercely Assault" move.  The GM then determines the result of that move which (depending on how low the roll is) may result in harm to the character and/or their target. After the move the GM can react, and then the player(s) can make more moves (either more "Fiercely Assault", or something else).

Injuries

Each character has a harm track, similar to an amount of hit points, which is determined by their playbook.  For example, The Revenant has the harm boxes "Shape-shifting, Angry, Exhausted (-1 Force), Hallucinating (-1 Steel), Dead".

As a character takes damage they mark off harm boxes.  Different weapons can do anywhere from 1 to 5 harm (eg. unarmed attacks do 1-2, while pre-apocalyptic weapons can deal 4-5).

Healing

The character's first few harm boxes (which are descriptive but have no penalty) heal immediately once the threat of combat is over.  If a character is injured to the point of reaching penalty harm boxes they require medical attention and several days to heal up.