Misfortune_-_Dramatic_Roleplaying

MISFORTUNETM Dramatic Roleplaying

Artificer Games

Game & layout: artificer Thank you to all playtesters,
a.k.a Teemu Pennala and the nice folk at /gdg/!

art: Nathaniel Pilgrim you know who you are.

Editing: Lillian Cohen-Moore

MISFORTUNE
1st edition

Unless you really can’t get it otherwise, please use the
intended channels of distribution (i.e either physical copies or
Drivethrurpg). If for nothing but traffic, I would appreciate
it nonetheless!

This game and the contents thereof are a copyrighted property
of Artificer Games. It’s also technically free, so distributing it
out of the intended channels is kind of pointless.

Creation of copies for personal use is explicitly permitted.

Creation of any modifications or content designed to be used with
copyrighted material of Artificer Games is explicitly permitted,
just don’t be an a-hole about it. If you are a creator of such
material, please contact me for the proper procedures. I
would love to read any material inspired by my games.

Introduction

Misfortune is a Role-Playing Game

with a heavy narrative focus. As you play the game, you weave
a story together. And that is
Misfortune emulates stories the purpose of the game, to
entertain with a story where
through story conventions and everyone contributes to it.
The high stakes and drama of
concepts, and the game’s mechanics the story are the focal point
of Misfortune.
revolve around story conventions.

This makes the game work pretty

much with anything, without any

tinkering with the mechanics. Any

comic books, manga, movies or series

you might want to emulate, it can.

The logic of the game hinges
on the rules of narrative, so
understanding them makes playing
the game much easier. You have
consumed narrative media before,
so you probably know how it
works already. There will be
special information boxes like this
to explain narrative concepts or
to give hints on how to play.

Playing Materials Character sheets can be
found on
Playing the game requires www.artificergames.com
a narrator and players. in PDF format
The game can revolve on
any number of players, but
1-6 is the recommendation.
You need 3 six-sided dice
(d6) preferably for each
player, pens and paper.
Having character sheets is
recommended, but it’s not a
requirement to play.

2

Table of Contents Character sheet
Basics 6
4-5
Scene Creation
Game Setup 9
7-8

Player Characters Revelations
10 - 13 14 - 15

rolls Struggles Misfortune
16 - 19 20 - 21 22 - 24

Optional Rules and tips Character bios
25 - 26 27

3

Basics

In Misfortune, you weave a story together. The Narrator
explains the scenarios the players encounter, the players
interact with them and create new situations with their
actions.

When a player attempts something and there’s something at
stake for failing, the players roll against the stakes of the
situation. The characters can save themselves from a sticky
situation either by having fitting Traits, Revealing new Traits,
or using Misfortune.

If the characters are trying to beat someone or a task is
simply too large to be resolved with a single roll (A battle,
time-sensitive problem or any other significant event), the
players are met with a Struggle.

Narrator Player

The Narrator in the game is a Players take control of
special player, who is responsible singular characters in the
for coming up with events and game, and the game centers
characters the other players around them. The player has
meet during the game. They are nigh-absolute control over
responsible for mediating the the fate of their character.
game’s rules to the players This also makes them
and having the world react responsible for what happens
to the players’ actions. The to the character.
Narrator doesn’t roll dice.

Characters

The players start with an empty paper or character sheet. The characters
have Traits, but they are revealed and added to the character during
play. Traits you have on your sheet influence rolls you make, and only
then. Adding traits to your character is a big part of the game.

4

Rolling Difficulty

When the stakes are raised, 6 Low Stakes
and there is something to 8 High Stakes
lose, you roll. The difficulty 10 Massive Stakes
of the roll is defined by the 12 Absolute Stakes
amount of stakes there are in
the roll. Examples for these stake
levels can be found on p.17.
The player then rolls 2d6,
announces the result to the Misfortune
Narrator and the Narrator
describes whether the action Misfortune is a feature all
succeeds. characters have. Whenever
you are unsatisfied with a
If the roll is less than the roll you make (such as failing
difficulty, the character a roll you don’t want to), you
fails. If the roll is more can take a point of Misfortune
than the difficulty, the to try again. This can be done
character succeeds. If the as many times as you want.
roll is exactly as much
as the difficulty, look up Having Misfortune causes
”Conflicted” from page 18. perilous things to happen if
you roll double 1s.

Foreshadowing

your character’s Traits are not known until they are
revealed. Before that, they exist only as Foreshadowing in
your roleplaying. A character who is secretly a werewolf,
for example, might grow twitchy as time goes on, knowing
the full moon is drawing closer.

You are rewarded if you play up a Trait before it’s revealed.

See p.14 for how to reveal traits.

5

Character Sheet

If you opt to use Character Sheets, here’s a short guide for how
to use them.

1. Name and Player fields are for the names of your character
and yourself.

2. You write your Traits up when they are revealed.
(2a) Mark a + or - to the Polarity.
(2B) Mark the Value of the trait.
(2C) Finally, if the trait is Rising or Falling, make the Direction
line into an arrow pointing up or down, respectively.

3. Misfortune is in the middle of the sheet. Each box represents a
different Severity of Misfortune. You can write up some possible
Misfortunate Events that can happen to your character in each
of the boxes. When you gain Misfortune, you can color or mark
the circles with numbers.

Alternatively, you can use tiny trinkets like glass gems to track
your Misfortune.

4. Under Misfortune you find Story Points (SP). Record your SP
total to the circle. Under the Story Points, you have a table of
everything you can do with them (4A).

11

2 abc 3

3

3

4
a

6

Game Setup Premise

Every story has a beginning. Every story has a
For your beginning, the premise, like playing
opening scene has two witches of the wood and
important goals: To establish causing mayhem by being
the game’s premise, and to oblivious, or being
introduce the characters in heroic teenagers that
some way. need to fight the forces
of evil. You can come up
If you have no idea how you’re with the game’s premise
going to start the game, and before the game, or as
the clock is ticking, use these the game begins.
guidelines to start the game
with a bang!

Voting

If you have absolutely nothing on the paper, instead of trying to
force and come up with something for the players, have ramifications
for the first scene and its goal, nothing else. The other details are
filled in with players. If you have notes ready for things that are
going to happen, make them vague enough that you can apply them to
most plausible settings.

When you vote on a topic, the Voting Topics:
Narrator should give the first - What kind of
suggestion. All players and the setting is this?
Narrator have the right to veto, - Players’ place in
and whoever vetoes provides a the world?
suggestion. If multiple veto, one - Why are the
of them provides a suggestion. players in the
situation they’re in?
When everyone agrees on a topic,
you proceed to the next question.
If you can’t come into agreement
with voting alone, compromise.

7

Scene Zero

Imagine the first scene or
session as the first episode
of any run-of-the-mill
TV series or chapter of a
book. just add the flavor
that you want to have with
the game.

If the game revolves
around hunting or fighting
supernatural creatures,
for instance, have a willing
player start out as a civilian
who is attacked. When the
cavalry arrives, it also
works as an introduction
round and an exposition
dump for the details of the
setting, in addition to having
action. The civilian should
naturally be recruited to
the group, and let the game
begin proper. Even though
this civilian would be the
protagonist in many a series
or movie, this doesn’t mean
that the character is the
protagonist.

If the game has a non-action
flavor, set up a different
kind of conflict to resolve.

8

Scene Creation

Each game session can be divided into multiple scenes. By and large,
a scene usually has one to five setpieces (characters, items or
points of interest) which the players can interact with, and spans
a certain amount of time. However, the genre of game makes that
amount of time variable. Sometimes, a single scene is a fight that
takes two minutes, and other times it’s a political meeting that
takes several days. A scene can be an intimate moment where time
is nearly still, a montage taking up a long time, or anything in
between.

Question Obstacle

The easiest way to define Between the players and the
what is a scene is a sequence resolution there must be an
of events that resolves a obstacle. It doesn’t need to
question. Do the heroes beat be opaque, you can leave the
the villain? Does the red army players wondering what the
beat the blue one? Who will obstacle itself is. This can be
marry the princess? Is the anything from a lone guard
defendant guilty? on a watchtower, to the
pushy nature of a lawman.
Similarly, this question is the
crux of the scene, and a scene Overcoming the obstacle is
without a question usually often handled as a Struggle
goes nowhere. There’s no (p.20), or as a series of
hard rules for the questions narrative threads and rolls
themselves, but an underlying that influence the direction
question is a good starting that the narration takes.
point for most scenes.

Result

You can’t predict what your players will do, but you can imagine the
end results that follow. A couple of possible scenarios that can
happen at the end of any given scene are really helpful to have at
hand. The action or inaction of players on certain aspects defines
what result they will get, if any.

For example, you can have the fate of a character be a possible
result. Knowing that either the character will die or survive due to
the players’ actions, you can more easily design the scenes to come
and how the presence or absence of this character affects them.

9

Player Characters

When you start the game with a blank sheet of paper, you
might think to yourself: ”I want to bring out my character’s
flavor somehow!” and that’s where Traits, Revelations and
Story Points come to play. You use Revelations to gain Traits.

Story Points At the beginning of the game,
you start with 0 Story
Story Points (or SP) Points. However, as long as
represent your character’s you’re not on negative Story
ability to change. Gained Points, you can spend them.
through failure, trials and Only once you’re on negative
tribulations, they can be are you disallowed to spend
used to Reveal new traits of more until you regain to at
your character. least 0.

Story points can be used to various things aside from revelations,
from forcefully activating traits to having plot armor.

Cost Effect
-X Plot Armor (X = Misfortune)
-X Gain a Passive Trait [+] (X)
-2 Gain a Falling Trait [+] (10)
-1 Activate a trait
-1 Inspire

Gain Effect
+X Gain a Passive Trait [-] (X)
+2 Gain an Rising Trait [-] (10)
+1 Foreshadowing
+1 Engage with a Leading Question
+1 Activation Bonus

10

Traits

Traits are aspects of the character, either positive or negative,
which have numerical values and affect the rolls themselves. Traits
are extremely broad, and encompass everything from clumsiness to
magical powers, from being a detective to being afraid of spiders.

Each trait has a name, polarity, a value (2 - 10) and a direction.

Name is the trait’s Polarity means whether said trait
is positive or negative. This is
description, and often context-based, and different
characters can even have the same
determines the context trait with opposite polarities.

for said trait. You For example, having [Werewolf] as
a positive trait could mean that the
cannot activate a trait character can use their lycanthropy
to gain fortitude and prowess in
unless its context makes battle. On the other hand, having
[Werewolf] as a negative trait
sense. You wouldn’t could mean that the character can
lose control while transformed,
use [Pyromancy] to or be ostracized because of being a
monster.
work out a math test,

or [Scientist] to

summon flames. Unless

you can explain it in an

interesting, funny or

clever way, that is.

Value determines Direction determines

how strong that where the trait is

trait is for the heading, whether it’s

character. When rising, falling or passive.

a roll is same or Passive traits rarely

less than the trait’s change, whereas rising

value, the trait or falling traits follow

activates. Normal a straightforward path

traits have values from one end of the

2 - 10. Exceptional spectrum to another. See

traits can have Trait Shifts for more.

values up to 12.

11

Using traits

When your trait fits the roll’s context, it has a chance of affecting
the roll. If your basic roll (2d6) is same or lower than the trait’s
value, the trait becomes active, and the roll becomes polarized.
A negative trait gives negative polarity, and a positive trait gives
positive polarity. (See Polarized Rolls p. 16)

Alternatively, you can spend 1 Story Point to forcefully activate a
trait regardless of the roll.

If two or more opposing (positive & negative) traits both become
active in this way, you don’t add dice from either. Even if one side
outweighs the other, the roll stays neutral. Two or more similar
(negative & negative / positive & positive) traits do not give additional
dice even if they activate simultaneously.

Activation Bonus

During each game session, you gain a bonus every time a negative trait
comes back to hinder your rolls for the first time. When a negative
trait activates for the first time in a game session, you gain 1 SP. This
is counted separately for each trait.

When you take a new trait during a roll, you don’t gain this bonus.

Trait Shifts

Rising and Falling traits have a special quality. They shift up or
down as the game goes on, and change their polarity. Whenever
a rising or falling trait is activated for the first time in a game
session, they change.

Rising means the trait is heading toward Positive (10), becoming
smaller if it is negative, and larger when positive. They start from
[ - ] (10).

Falling means the trait is heading toward Negative (10), becoming
smaller if it’s positive, and larger when negative. They start from
[ + ] (10).

Any trait can be lowered or raised by 1 once activated. You can spend
1 SP to raise a positive trait or lower a negative trait by 1. You can
gain 1 SP by lowering a positive trait or raising a negative trait by 1.

12

Exceptional Traits

When a rising or falling trait
becomes 1 (or 0), it morphs
into the opposite version
of itself, or sometimes to a
different trait altogether.
Sometimes, this means the
trait’s name doesn’t change
at all, only the effects it
has.

This new trait is defined as an
Exceptional trait. When the
trait reaches value 10, the
value turns into 12.

For example, when a cowardly
character hits this milestone,
they become brave instead,
and in time become the bravest
of them all.

Temporary Traits You gain or
spend 1 SP when
All traits need not last forever. you reveal a
Things like injuries, temporary boons, temporary trait.
intoxication, tiredness, harmful spells
or being in chains won’t last forever.

In these cases, you can take an
temporary trait. A temporary trait will
disappear either when the scene ends,
until it shifts to 0, or when something
appropriate is done to it (such as resting
with a treated wound, or the chains of a
prisoner are released). Temporary traits
cannot become more severe over time,
their value can only become smaller.

Temporary traits are always rising or
falling, starting from value 5.

13

Revelations

As you reveal a trait, something new is learned about the character.
Be it positive or negative, it’s an important character moment.
When you roll, you can reveal a trait. This always involves you
either gaining or spending Story Points. Positive traits have you
spending Story Points, and negative traits have you gaining them.
When you reveal a trait, it will be activated automatically.

Foreshadowing

While playing the game, you should play your character in a way to
foreshadow coming traits. If your character has latent psychic or
magic powers, have some odd events plague the character. If you
come up with a weird quirk that your character has, expand on it
and make it into a trait.
If the majority of the players and the Narrator think that your
revelation was entertaining or well foreshadowed, you gain 1 SP.

Subversion This is the most absolute power you have as
a narrator, use it sparingly, mostly to things
that wildly go against the game’s theme

Sometimes, a trait is too good to be true. The Narrator has the final
word on any foreshadowing or trait.

If you foreshadow there to be a sword that can kill anything, the
Narrator can subvert this, making the foreshadowing into something
of a monkey’s paw.

Say, once you find the sword, it’s a little different. The sword can
indeed kill anything, but it has its own will and doesn’t want to. You
still gain the benefits, but it has a requirement to work.

If the Narrator subverts your revelation, you gain 1 SP.

14

Leading Questions Use these to your heart’s
content. They are the
To nudge their players into a narrator’s main way of
certain direction, the Narrator asserting power.
can ask leading questions from
the players, and award the
players with Story Points if
they go with the idea.

For example, if a character
falls off a cliff, the Narrator
might ask ”How badly do you
injure yourself?”. Or if
the character pulls out a
legendary sword from a
stone, the Narrator might
ask ”Why is the sword
legendary?”. If the
player takes the fitting
trait in response, they
gain 1 SP.

15

Rolls

Dice and rolls are used when there are stakes at play in
an action. Sometimes difficulty alone can be a stake, but the
higher the stakes, the more difficult the roll will be.

Actions with no stakes, such as simply opening a door with no
stakes is no place for a roll, it can take part in the normal
player narration. This is, unless opening the door holds some
significance or difficulty for the situation or the characters.
Similarly, if a task is simply impossible, there is no need to
roll the dice.

There are two kinds of rolls, Basic rolls and Polarized rolls.

Basic rolls Polarized Rolls

Every roll starts with When a trait activates, a roll and
a Basic roll. The Basic all of its rerolls polarize. When
roll is always 2d6, and a roll is polarized, it can be either
it can gain Polarity. positive or negative. You roll a
The total of the dice is third die to the roll, and take either
compared to relevant the two highest or two lowest dice
traits and the roll’s of the roll to be counted. You then
difficulty. compare the total of those to the
difficulty of the roll.
If a roll didn’t
polarize, rerolling You take the lowest two dice if the
results in another activated trait is negative, and the
basic roll. highest two if the trait is positive.

Rerolling a polarized roll causes the reroll to be polarized in kind.
Once polarized, a roll or its rerolls cannot change polarity anymore.

16

Comparison Difficulty is the number
you need to exceed with
The way dice are used your roll to succeed in
in Misfortune is direct the action.
comparison. There are
no modifiers applied Trait value is used to see
to the roll before whether a trait affects
or after the dice are the roll.
rolled. You roll the
dice, and compare the
result to a couple of
target numbers.

There are two Target
Numbers: Difficulty and
Trait Value.

If you roll either the Minimum (2) or Maximum (12), you forgo
comparison to difficulty entirely. Minimum is an automatic failure, and
Maximum is an automatic success. However, if the roll causes a trait
to activate, the trait activates before the roll succeeds or fails.

Difficulty Just because something is easy doesn’t mean
you don’t need to roll for it. For example, if you
need to kiss a princess to stop the world from
ending, you bet actually kissing the princess is
presented as a roll of extreme difficulty.

Each roll should be (6) Low Stakes :
meaningful, so there Embarrassing yourself, risking
should always be injury, breaking an object of value
something at stake. The

Narrator should come (8) High Stakes:
up with a negative Major setback on your goals,
thing that happens if someone close to you getting injured
the character fails

the roll, and define (10) Massive Stakes:
the difficulty of the Someone close to you dies, major
roll depending on antagonist wins
how severe that

negative result is. (12) Absolute Stakes:

The end of the world as we know it

17

Resolution

After you have rolled, the Narrator explains the result
of the action, whether you succeed or fail. When failure
is obvious, the Narrator should narrate the situation
clearly, to allow you to recuperate and use Misfortune
or a Revelation before it’s too late.

- Failure: You rolled less than the Difficulty
- Conflicted: You rolled exactly the Difficulty
- Success: You rolled more than the Difficulty

Sometimes failure might be ambiguous, such as when
talking in court. Similarly the description of the failure
should be ambiguous in that case.

Conflicted

Conflicted is a special
state that happens when
you roll exactly as
much as your Difficulty.
Before failing and
causing some kind of
negative consequence,
the character realizes
it a split-second before
it happens. This allows
them to recuperate.

When conflicted, you
can gain Misfortune
to succeed against
that Difficulty without
needing to reroll. But if
you don’t take the point
of Misfortune, you fail.

18

Failing Forward
Every failure is an opportunity for roleplaying, and they shouldn’t
stop a game to its tracks. When failing, failure shouldn’t simply
mean the inability to do something, but creating a new problem while
succeeding.
So when trying to pick a lock, failure doesn’t necessarily mean
that the character can’t pick the lock, but for example that the
lock rattles loudly enough to alert somebody, or that the lock
triggers a trap. When running from a zombie horde, instead of
failing to escape, you could be bitten and contract the zombie virus.

19

Struggles

Sometimes a single roll is not enough to encompass a sequence
of events. Sometimes you need to overpower another character
or do something of a larger scale. This is called a struggle.

Struggle Rolls

During a struggle, players can make actions and advance. You make
rolls as usual, and try to get a number of successes defined by the
Narrator.

If you have a great plan for an action, the Narrator may reward you
by making the difficulty of that roll lower, or at best, lower the
difficulty of the entire Phase.

Phases

A struggle is always
divided to multiple
phases. Each phase has
a separate goal in mind.
A simple way to explain
this is by an example, a
heist. Different kinds
of struggles have
differing amounts of
phases, but having
2-5 phases is the
recommended amount.

A heist, for example,
is made of three to
four different phases,
depending on how the
players want to tackle
the situation. There’s
the investigation phase,
the securing phase, the
infiltration phase and
the escape phase.

20

Phase Limit

Each phase has a Limit,
a number of successful
rolls the players need
to advance safely.
There’s no strict number
to use as limits, but an
average Phase should
have a limit of roughly
equal to the player
count that contributes
to a phase.

The players can move to
the next phase whenever
they want. If the
previous Phase’s limit
was not met, the Phase
will be more difficult,
either by having higher
difficulty on rolls or a
higher Limit.

difficulty and complications The Final Phase

During a Phase, every roll has the same In the final phase
difficulty. At the beginning of each phase, of the struggle,
the Narrator evaluates the difficulty of the players must
the rolls and sets a new limit. meet the limit
before they can end
When you fail a roll during a Struggle, the struggle.
the stakes of the struggle rise. On the
following Phases of the struggle, the A struggle can also
difficulty will be raised accordingly. end prematurely
if the situation
For example, if you’re fighting a villain, changes, the player
the situation for the fight may change. characters give
Say, the villain’s plans are laid out to up, or another
show how your failure will lead to dire struggle starts
consequences, or that the villain starts before the first
the self-destruct sequence of their base. one ends.

21

Misfortune

Misfortune is a measure of the
danger a character is in. It’s an
imperceptible burden that keeps
piling on the character. If you’re
not careful, it can mean the end
for your character.

Gain and loss

When you are rolling, you can take
a point of Misfortune to reroll the
roll. Once you have 7 Misfortune,
you don’t gain any more. At this
point, you can reroll indefinitely.

You reduce your Misfortune Just think of it as the
by 1 whenever you gain Story opposite of luck. Every
Points. every time you are struck time bad things happen
with a Misfortunate event, your to you, you spend the
Misfortune is lowered to a lower Misfortune you have
Severity. For example, if your gained. Similarly, you can
Misfortune was 5, being hit with see rerolling as pushing
a Misfortunate event means your your luck.
Misfortune total becomes 3.

Severity

When you gain a certain amount
of Misfortune, your Misfortune
goes to a higher Severity. Severity
means the consequences you will
face because of Misfortune will be
greater.

0 Nothing happens
1-3 Trouble
4-6 Scene removal
7 Game removal

22

Misfortunate Events

When your roll’s final result is snake eyes (1+1), you are
unable to reroll and your Misfortune activates, with
the Severity according to your current Misfortune. The
player who rolls it explains how the event plays out.

On your character sheet, you can write possible
Misfortunate Events that may happen to your character.
If, for an example, the character is secretly a traitor,
they would only act on it if they are met with a
Misfortunate Event with a fitting severity.

Trouble means that something in the
current situation turns against you, such
as a weakness being revealed, tripping an
alarm, dropping an item or having a pick
stuck in a lock. Think of it as an extension
of failure, a critical failure in a sense.

Scene removal is when something happens
that removes the character from the
current scene, such as getting knocked
out, getting an important phone call, being
injured so badly they can’t go on or having
an old wound or sickness act up which
incapacitates them.

Game removal is the final stop for the
character. The character is removed from
the game via death, betrayal, breaking down,
disappearance or heroic sacrifice. Anything
is game here, but the character is certainly
gone from the game and story afterwards.

23

Plot Armor Inspire

You can protect your character Also known as screaming
from the most perilous of things someone’s name so they
with some good old Plot Armor. wouldn’t die. You probably
You can use Plot Armor to reduce know what I’m talking about.
the effects of the Misfortunate
Event to the lower severity. When another character

For example, when a character would suffer from a
would’ve died from falling into
lava (and thus being removed Misfortunate Event,
from the game), they can use
plot armor to instead only be you can Inspire them
removed from the current scene,
only to reappear later with the to negate the Event,
explanation of their choosing,
such as being saved by a fire spending one Story Point
spirit, or knowing some protective
magic that saved them. and making a roll against

Using Plot Armor costs Story their Misfortune total.
Points equal to your current
Misfortune. If you succeed in the
roll, your characters
Returning characters swap the amount of
Misfortune they have, and
the Misfortunate Event
doesn’t play out.

Sometimes, you might want to bring a character back after
they’ve been removed from the game. Say, said character
started turning into a monster and wilfully excommunicated
themselves to not hurt the party or anyone they care about.

So, the scenario is clear, you have to find the excommunicated
member and somehow turn them back to how they were before.
This can take a few play sessions when they bumble around
and try to find a cure, or it can be a campaign in itself.

See the next page for a solution what to do with the player
whose character is returning, because they might have a
problem if they make a new character in the way.

24

Optional Rules and Tips

Blast Rules

For shorter games, the original ruleset might be a little slow, so
here are some alternative Blast rules. You can use all of them, or
only some of them, depending on the game you’re playing.
Blast Traits: Rising and Falling traits start from value 5. Temporary
traits start from 3.
Blast Dice: Basic Rolls are 1d6. Polarized rolls are 2d6. Misfortune
activates when the final result is 1. Misfortune Severities are now 1-2 /
3-4 / 5, and difficulties are halved. Exceptional traits become value 6.
Blast Scenes: Each session-based mechanic (Like gaining SP from
Activation Bonus) now works with every scene instead.

Substitute Narrator

It might be a problem if a removed character’s player would need to
choose between a new character and the old one when the character
returns to the party. A possible way to handle this conundrum is to
have that player work as the Narrator until the character returns.
It might not always be preferable, but it can change up the game
for a few sessions, and let the other players delve deeper to the
returning character’s backstory or some other interesting element
that is used to bring that character back into the game.
While the original Narrator should take part in the adventure as a
player - maybe turning an NPC into a full-fledged character - they
can also give some guidance on what kind of elements are and are
not possible to bring out to the game by the substitute Narrator.

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Roll Contest

Sometimes two player characters might want
to contest against each other. In these
cases, the characters make rolls back and
forth, rerolling as they see fit. The contest
ends when either character drops out either
intentionally or not, or if either gets 12 as
the final result.

The first player rolls, and then the second
tries to beat their roll. If they do, the first
player tries to beat the second player’s roll
and so on until the feud is settled.

After the fact, the loser has their Misfortune
reduced by a single level of severity.

If both players roll the same number, the
result is a draw, and both characters’
Misfortune is reduced by a single level of
severity.

Dualistic Traits

Sometimes, a trait could be more than just
positive or negative, but both. If you want
the two sides of the trait to work together,
you can have that trait become a dualistic
trait. That trait can be either a positive or
negative one depending on the context of the
roll. This is determined by the Narrator. The
same value applies to both sides of the trait.

Dualistic traits have the cost of 0 Story
Points, independent of their value. Gaining
Dualistic Traits, however, should be only at
Narrator discretion, and often be tied to a
common concept in the setting, to enforce
the dualistic nature of it.

26

Character Bios

name: Nakajima Mao

Description: the banchou of east high. Runs errand on
the boys in her gang, Most of whom she has beaten
the shit out of at some point. The mortal enemy of the
student council. Known to most only as ’Aneki’.

traits:

Street Brawler + 8 Injured Ankle - 3
Easily Frustrated - 9 ↑

name: Gruggh

Description: With the faint memories of his past life still
intact, Gruggh is more intelligent than most walking
dead. sadly, being remotely sane makes the main activity
of zombies - eating people - rather unappetizing for him.

traits:

Intelligent + 4 Some morals intact - 7 ↓

name: Satou Takeda

Description: A freak of nature. Satou has been gifted
with insurmountable amount of psychic power, and joined
the resistance to fight the government controlled by
corporations that tries to cull psychics.

traits:

Psychic + 9 ↓ Reckless - 6

Socially inept - 7 ↑

27

28

Misfortune is a narrative
role-playing game in the
literal sense. Its game
mechanics handle the
characters and story
as tangible things, as
something that can be
affected.

Mechanically it is short and
simple, but created with
a strong, single-minded
vision. It is a game created
to run anything, and to
bring any game situation
the amount of drama and
tension it deserves.

In it, the player is given
the power to forge their
character’s destiny from
the ground up. The simplicity
of the game gives way to
unlimited possibilities.

It is my heart and Soul

-Artificer

ISBN 978-952-69031-1-8 (PDF)
ISBN 978-952-69031-0-1 (paperback)