5dRPG Playtest

Creating your character

While you are more than welcome to work with me to create your own character, I've provided 8 pregen characters for everyone to chose from at the beginning of the session. The 5dRPG Starter Cast gives players eight ready-to-play cinematic heroes, each built to show off a different part of the system. Pick the character whose movie sounds fun, grab their cards, and jump straight into the scene. Daniel Mercer is The Wall: a former high school football coach turned private security. He protects exits, blocks threats, holds doors, and puts himself between danger and everyone else. Teresa Alvarez is The Fixer: a city permit expediter with forms, favors, contacts, and “temporary” workarounds. She turns locked doors, missing tools, and bureaucratic friction into solvable problems. Malcolm Reed is The Ghost: a quiet operator who knows staff doors, overlooked routes, and places nobody is watching. He sneaks, scouts, slips through service paths, and brings back useful Secrets. Elaine Porter is The Face: a performer and public-pressure specialist who can make a room look, listen, and believe. She builds Trust, redirects attention, steadies crowds, and makes emotional turns land. Victor Sloane is The Analyst: a suspicious investigator who connects details other people dismiss. He finds contradictions, spends Secrets, asks sharp questions, and turns evidence into leverage. Jasmine Okafor is The Scrapper: fast, physical, improvisational, and hard to pin down. She moves first, uses objects, crosses hazards, shoves trouble around, and thrives when scenes get messy. Priya Nair is The Medic: a crisis stabilizer who keeps people alive, calm, and moving when everything starts to break. She reduces Stress, protects the vulnerable, and turns panic into action. Everett Shaw is The Commander: a coordinator who turns chaos into routes, roles, and plans. He names the objective, creates Setup, directs the team, and helps everyone cash in when pressure rises. Together, the Starter Cast covers protection, access, stealth, social pressure, investigation, mobility, recovery, and team coordination — everything a table needs to start the movie fast.

Preparing for the session

We'll be playing on Discord. I have a server set up already for playtesting.

What AlEcyler brings to the table

5dRPG is a cinematic movie experience, so expect to have some awesome spotlight scenes. We very much embrace Rule of Cool. But don't expect simply combat, there will be plenty of mystery and intregue and social encoutners as well as investigation mechanics to uncover what's really happening. I'll have ambient music and voice acting as we learn and playtest this new system, along with plenty of scene setting images to help you get into the movie.

Homebrew rules

We will be running 5dRPG, which is itself currently a homebrew system. The Rough Cut Core document is published and available for free. Familiarity with the rules is encouraged, but by no means required.

How AlEcyler creates a safe table

This game is roughly equivilent to a PG-13 movie.