In the Far Roofs, heroic talking rats and monster-god "Mysteries" have taken up residence on your city's roofs, and on moody fantasy roofscapes extending beyond them. You play as humans who get swept up in the rats' adventures, confronting wonder and horror in this magical secret world above.
It all starts with the Fortitude rats. They're the ones who woke up from the sleep of rats, who found consciousness and speech – who became not just rats but heroes. They are amazing. They don't exactly have strength, but they have tenacity and grace and hearts overflowing with valor; you can't take five minutes in their company without becoming a little braver, yourself.
If you meet them, you'll love them, get involved with their stories, go up onto their roofs, where they face terrible – things. There is another world, next door to our own. If you go up, and you run the roofs like the rats do, the roofs get closer and closer until eventually they merge and you can't see the houses beneath them. Whole landscapes hide above us: strange fairylands, magic gardens, inexplicable towers; all manner of wonders. Regrettably, this is the demesne of the Mysteries.
To be clear, the rats don't want you on the roofs. It's too dangerous up there. But you can persuade them. Just look them in the eye, be honest, and say: "I can't let this go."
The Far Roofs uses pens or pencils, paper, six-sided dice, ten-sided dice, playing cards, and a bag of letter tiles. It's complete in one volume: with this one book and this equipment, you have everything you need to play.
To resolve day-to-day actions, you roll five six-sided dice ("5d6") and look for matches. Pairs, up to the Trait they're rolling, represent "success" – for instance, a Trait of 2 succeeds with a pair of 1s or a pair of 2s. Rolls with no matches are critical failures. Rolls with 3+ matching dice give critical success.
To address bigger-picture dilemmas, you draw letter tiles and playing cards. Build words out of the tiles to represent new understandings, or to shape ambiguous outcomes. Assemble poker hands to represent long-term gambles; the quality of the hand determines how well such things go.
The included multi-year campaign takes the characters from their first tentative steps on the roofs, through confrontations with moon-stealing monsters, world-shaping machinery, and dead gods, to a final grand encounter with the numinous beyond. As the story progresses, your characters gain access to more than 150 narrative-focused powers developed for the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG, then simplified and adapted for use here. Activating these powers is another use for cards, with many requiring a card of a certain value or suit – for instance:
- Keen Sense 5+: Sniff out secrets if there are any available to sense; if not, sense anything of interest. 8+: Follow a trail.
- Old Friends 8+: Have a favorable history with a stranger or important member of a group of strangers. Club card: Someone now knows you like an old friend.
As these powers accumulate, they may change you, remake you. To walk the far roofs is to risk becoming a legend, or, a god.
In The Far Roofs you'll often play yourself – or a version of yourself – or, at least, someone relatively mundane you can empathize with. This game centers emotional experience. It's designed to feel real: to make you feel embodied and present even as you travel its impossible lands. Its primary moods are wonder; disorientation; presence in the moment. Less often, it slips into the register of fantastic adventure, delirium and body horror, inspired (character) genius, or peace.
Content warning: This book contains existential horror; body horror; unreality; references to aphasia, death, dissociation,despair, derealization, skinlessness, and Grayvale's sun; and also a rather large number of rats.
Learn more at the March 2024 Kickstarter campaign page.
Adventurer! This new Far Roofs Special presents The Far Roofs, the tabletop roleplaying game by Jenna Moran (Nobilis, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine) about talking rats, god-monsters, and you. In your own home town, in a strange landscape that stretches across the rooftops, intelligent and heroic rats confront the Mysteries – very personal horrors that seek to crush you, personally. When the shadow of Mystery falls across your life, you join the rats in their terrifying yet beautiful domain and become entangled in their adventures. Trace story arcs of training, bindings, mystic life, and otherworldly connection. Follow Hoop Snake, read the Sphinx's scrawled grafitti, answer the calling of Cat-Headed King Death, and fight – or find peace with – the terrible serpent Typhon, who is named Outrage. The Far Roofs, a standalone game and a complete campaign in one, uses Scrabble tiles, playing cards, dice, and more than 150 powers adapted from Chuubo's to bring you the wonders you'd never find, all the things you could discover in the living world.
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Tell your favorite rats about The Far Roofs