How to play No Port Called Home

How to play No Port Called Home.

 

Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for No Port Called Home. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play No Port Called Home yourselves.

There are a dozen different races to pick from in No Port Called Home. They include humans, giant jotunn, amphibious nix, genetically enhanced vesp, nomadic hedonistic fae, indestructible robotic archon, freed former worker drone tsuku, and more. When you build your character, you will pick one of these races. Use the race’s character sheet as your starting character sheet, that you’ll add more and more things to later. The rule book has an example crew mate named Zephyr who is a tsuku race, a freed former worker drone. I will refer to Zephyr’s character sheet throughout this how to play guide, using Zephyr as an example.

Let’s talk about classes. No Place Called Home has nearly forty classes. You will pick three of them to build your character. These classes include a calibrist who obsessively optimizes a firearm, a swordfiend who stabs opponents with point objects, a martial artist who fights with their hands, a brute who fights with this chair they happened to find, a fortress that gains defensive bonuses as long as they hold their position, an engineer who can maintain and improve the team’s vehicle, a strategist who can delegate extra actions to their teammates, a con artist who and lies and fibs, a changeling who can rearrange their limbs, a conduit who can splice their mind into machines to remote listen to conversations, a swarmmaster with clouds of loyal insects, and more. Doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun options? Great news, you get to pick not one, not two, but three of them. Which three should you pick? The rule book suggests picking a combination of classes that empower you to take action both in and out of combat. Don’t limit yourself to only in-combat effects. For our example character build, Zephyr has the three classes of: martial artist who fights with their hands, freerunner who sprints and runs and does flips, and ranger, who prevents their teammates from setting off terrain effects through their expert guidance. Each class has some questions to think and write about. For example, among other questions, the ranger asks you to list four places you have been. The martial artist asks you, among other questions, if you advertise the fact that you are skilled in combat, or do you allow others to underestimate you? The freerunner asks you what you would do if a situation forced you to leave someone behind who could not run as fast. The three classes you pick will have questions that help you think about how your character would act.

Let’s talk about skills. There are four categories of skills: physical, social, knowledge, and practical. Physical skills include agility, dexterity, strength, your ability to orient yourself in zero gravity, stealth, endurance, and how well you squirm. Knowledge skills include your knowledge of biotech, history, people, places, engineering, computers, and medicine. Social skills include your ability to soothe, entertain, deceive, manipulate, persuade, command, and read people. Practical skills include your perception, survival, research, crafting, and piloting skills. There are more than twenty skills overall.

When you pick three classes, each class will come with points in skills and stats. Start out with a zero in all skills, and then add the numbers from your classes and write the total on your character sheet. For example, Zephyr is a martial artist, freerunner, and ranger. The martial artist gives them +2 in all physical skills, so that’s a 2 in agility, dexterity, strength, zero-g, stealth, endurance, and squirm. The martial artist also adds 2 in people reading. The freerunner adds 4 to agility and zero g, bringing those up to six, and adds two in stealth, endurance and squirm, bringing those up to four, and also adds two to entertain and perception. The ranger adds two to agility, endurance, stealth, knowledge of biotech, knowledge of places, soothe, perception, survival, and craft. That bumps Zephyr’s agility up to eight, and at six their endurance, zero-g, and stealth are pretty high, too. This has been an example of how to add your three classes’ skills together to get your character’s starting skill numbers.

Here are some example skill rolls Zephyr could make in No Place Called Home. Hungry in a field outside town, Zephyr might roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add their survival skill to forage for edible greens. If Zephyr was trying to think of a low cost bakery in town, you would roll on a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, plus their places skill number. If Zephyr was trying to persuade a non player character, or NPC, to give them a discount on day old baked goods, you would roll a d20 and add your persuade skill number. If you were trying to sneak past the baker to get into the kitchen, that would be a stealth roll of a d20 plus your stealth skill. If the baker found you and you wanted to jump out the window, that would be a d20 plus Zephyr’s agility skill. You would roll like this using your skills when attempting to accomplish a goal outside of combat.

Let’s talk about stats. Your character’s starting stats are the sum of the stats they get from their three classes. Add together the numbers in the symbols from each of your three classes and your race to get your starting stats. There are eight stats in No Place Called Home. Hit Points, attack, defense, initiative, skills per level, willpower, reflex, and fortitude.

Hit points are the cross symbol. If your character reaches negative ten hit points, they die. Zephyr has twenty two hit points, so if they take twenty two points of damage they would reach zero hit points and fall unconscious, and if they take thirty two points of damage, they would hit negative ten and die.

Attack is the symbol that looks like a sniper scope, and defense is the shield symbol. The attack skill is the number you add to a roll of a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, when you attack. You hit your target if you meet or beat their defense roll. When someone attacks you, roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add your defense number. If you beat their attack roll, their attack missed you and you take no damage. For example Zephyr has a three in attack and a four in defense. When trying to attack someone, Zephyr rolls their twenty sided dice and adds their attack of three. When being attacked by someone, Zephyr rolls a twenty sided dice and adds their defense of four. Because the average is a ten on a twenty sided dice, Zephyr’s average attack is thirteen and average defense is fourteen.

Here is an example attack. From their class bonuses, if they’re attacking unarmed, Zephyr gets two more conditional attack bonus from martial artist and one from freerunner. Their hands are 2 d4 bludgeoning weapons from their martial artist class. Zephyr swings a punch at their target. You roll a d20 and add your base attack, which is three, and also add your conditional attack because you are attacking unarmed. That’s a ten on the dice plus three base attack plus two plus one for conditional attack bonuses for being unarmed for a sixteen total to hit. Meet it to beat it. You would hit any enemy that has a sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, etc lower defense. To calculate the damage dealt, you would roll two four sided dice, also called d4, and add the results together. For example if one dice was a a three and one dice was a one, that would be four bludgeoning damage total from your martial artist’s fists.

Initiative is the symbol that looks like a diamond floating above a ripple on a pond. Initiative is the order people take action during combat. When a fight starts, everyone rolls a twenty sided dice and adds their initiative number. The highest rolls go first. For example Zephyr has a four in initiative. If Zephyr rolled a ten on their dice and added their four in initiative, the total would be fourteen. With fourteen as their initiative roll, Zephyr would take action before people who rolled a thirteen or below. But someone who rolled a fifteen or higher would get to take action before Zephyr.

Skills per level is the symbol that looks like a concave triangle with three dots on its three sides. Your character’s skills per level stat is how many skill ranks you gain each time you level up. These skill ranks are spread out amongst all your skills. When you level up, if you have the skill point for it, you can increase a single skill one point. Zephyr has a six in their stat of skills per level. This means that of the twenty six skills, they can increase six of them by one point each time they level up. For example, they level up and choose to increase their agility, dexterity, stealth, endurance, craft, and piloting skills by one point each. Because we’re talking about leveling up, I should mention that when you level up, you get to pick two feats that must be in different classes. My players, you will be leveling up twice, so you should have four feats total, with at most two of them in the same class.

Willpower is the circle symbol, reflexes is the diamond symbol, and fortitude’s symbol is a rectangle wider at the base than the top. Willpower, reflexes, and fortitude are all resistance bonuses. When a danger is attacking you in a specific way, your game master might prompt you to roll a saving throw. Zephyr’s willpower is 2. If the game master says the enemy is very scary and Zephyr should roll a willpower saving throw to see if they’re afraid or not, they would roll a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, and add their willpower of two. For willpower, Zephyr’s lowest possible roll is a three and highest possible roll is a twenty two. Zephyr’s reflex stat is seven. If the game master says the floor is collapsing under Zephyr and a successful reflex save will let them jump out of the way instead of falling, Zephyr would roll a d20 and add their reflex stat, seven. For reflex, Zephyr’s lowest possible roll is an eight, and highest possible roll is a twenty seven. The last resistance type is fortitude, which Zephyr has a two in. If the game master says that Zephyr has just been poisoned, Zephyr would roll a d20 and add two to their roll to resist this challenge to their fortitude.

Along with numbers for stats and skills, your character’s three classes will also come with a variety of other conditional bonuses and physical equipment. For example the ranger gives Zephyr the equipment of a tent, ten meters of rope, a compass, matches, a 2 d4 hunting knife, a water filter, sturdy shoes, bug spray, and sunscreen. The freerunner gives Zephyr an extra reaction per round, and +1 to attack when attacking unarmed. The martial artist gives Zephyr a +2 to attack when attacking unarmed, and Zephyr’s hands now count as 2 d4 bludgeoning weapons. Write these conditional bonuses, equipment, and other details from your three classes on your character sheet.

For the players in my upcoming session, please level up twice. Each level up will increase your feats and your skills. For feats, choose two feats that must be from different classes. We’re leveling up twice, so you should have four feats on your character sheet for this session. For stats, with each level up you can increase the level up stat’s number of skills by one. For example if you have a five in your level up stat, you can increase five stats by one point each time you level up. You can choose different skills the second time you level up if you’d like.

Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand combat and skills. For everyone listening, we encourage you to find the No Port Called Home rule book yourself, and play a game with friends. And if you’d like to hear an example adventure, I’m looking forward to playing No Port Called Home in an upcoming session.