Purgatoria

ATTENTION: Puragtoria: City of Angels is now on Kickstarter! You can find it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597847626/purgatoria-city-of-angels.

Interested in playing! The Purgatoria: City of Angels playtest packet has been released! You can find it here: http://www.purgatoriarpg.com/about-1/playtesting-information/

Originally known as just "City of Angels" (and changed because people couldn't stop mixing it up with that shitty Nick Cage movie), 'Purgatoria: City of Angels' is a attempt by several fa/tg/uys to make a system that features elements not typically seen in a gaming medium over-saturated with high fantasy. The game is one of the few to feature a relatively modern-day level of technology and thematic elements without boggling it down with magic or elves, or some shit like that. Players control citizens of a massive walled-in city caught in an ever-present war between several themed gangs. The combat system is a lot crunchier than most homebrew games, featuring a massive spread of usable combos.

The system came around as part of a writing challenge in 2013 and eventually mutated into a full-blown game engine complete with a unique setting. The game seems to be not terrible, judging from the reactions of the 10 people that have actually read all the way through the 200+ page beta packet.

Mechanical Engine

The engine of Purgatoria is designed to be easy-to-learn, but has a ton of crazy applications when expanding into some of the game's crunchier applications.

Dice Pools

Purgatoria uses a dice-pool system for determining if player skill checks are successful. When players want to make checks, they roll a number of dice equal to (relevant attribute + skill modifier) and count 4s,5s, and 6s and successes. Even attack checks are done this way to minimize the amount of obnoxious superfluous rules that need to be learned. If a player's attribute is higher than the DC of the check, the check is automatically successful, regardless of the dice roll outcome. Certain techniques can briefly change the rules to count '3s' as successes, making these abilities super powerful.

Action Points

All actions used in the combat system for Purgatoria are purchased prior to use with Action Points(AP). Prior to generating AP as a player, you must load three attributes, these loaded attributes determine the size of the dice pools that are used for generating AP. While it is normal to load one attribute of each of the three different categories of attributes, it becomes much more profitable to load two or three attributes of the same category, but doing so severely limits the range of techniques that you can purchase. Once you have loaded attributes, before combat has begun, or Round Zero, you gain AP equal to the maximum possible roll for each loaded attribute with this AP you are able to activate defenses. At the beginning of each round, you roll your AP dice pools, and add the number of successes to your AP banks. During the round you spend AP on movement, offensive techniques, and defensive techniques, in Purgatoria very few things are free. Now, some of the combo heavy classes can act every turn, but doing so will prevent you from using your more excessive combos; therefore it is recommended for such classes to save up multiple rounds of AP.

Attributes

There are nine primary attributes in Purgatoria, and their base values can range from one to ten. One being an awful stat, which shows you are a minmaxing to your heart's delight, and ten being an amazing stat, which shows that you didn't invest enough in your other attributes.

• Strength: The strength attributes determine how close your character is to being Marv.
  • Brawn: There is a direct correlation between points in this attribute, and the number of times that your character will ask people if they even lift. Also, it deals with beating people senseless with your body, or objects within reach.
  • Constitution: If it's not broken, don't fix it.
  • Grit: This is the direct Clint Eastwood levels attribute for your character, which lets you stare down the barrels of guns and not even flinch. Also, it deals with shooting people with big guns, and the requisite cheesy one liners after you succeed.
• Speed: The speed attributes determine how manually capable, fast, and good at seeing things?
  • Accuracy: This is the sniper specific stat, and should be the only stat that your sniper has points in, so that you can see a washer at three hundred yards, then put a bullet through the center of it. If you're character is not a sniper, and you have more than three in this stat, there is no excuse. This stat is used for shooting targets that are all the way across the room, drinking your milkshake.
  • Agility: Movement speed. Also, this attribute deals with beating people senseless Bruce Lee style.
  • Dexterity: Please refer to constitution. Also, deals with shooting people with little guns.
• Style: The style attributes determine how much of a pretentious asshat that your character is.
  • Charisma: The Petyr Baelish stat, all you need to know.
  • Grace: Grace measures how graceful your stylish, nimble, tasteful, and refined character is, or how comfortable they are with slipping into a dead person's skin like a latex gimp suit. Also, deals with slicing people with sharp, and stabby implements.
  • Intellect: The Sherlock Holmes stat, particularly the BBC version where Holmes uses the script that he keeps in his back pocket to solve mysteries. Also, deals with the convoluted combat art form: solving puzzles.

There are also two secondary attributes in Purgatoria, which are not directly advanced, but which rely on an increase in the relevant primary attribute to increase as well.

• Hit Points: How much damage you can take before you are wounded, and techniques cost extra to use. Relevant stat: Constitution.
• Move Speed: How far you can move on the cheap cheap with the standard movement. Relevant stat: Agility.

Combat

Prior to combat beginning each player rolls for initiative, which is a skill roll that the GM determines to be appropriate for the situation. This skill can be the same for all players, or the GM can exclusively require each player to roll a skill that the character has no ranks in, and in the attribute that they have a score of 1, this GM is winning. Combat revolves around expending action points to build combos and unleashing them on opponents. When combat starts, players select three stats and 'Load' them, allowing these stats to generate AP every turn via skill checks.

Players can them spend AP on fueling techniques that become combo strings. Techniques fall into four categories:

• Base Techniques: The bread and butter of a character's arsenal. These can range from simple things, like a DDT takedown or head shot, to more insane things, like throwing handful bullets and shooting them to create hailstorms of projectiles or vanishing and exploding out from an opponent.
• Combo Techniques: Combo techniques add properties to base techniques. These can be relatively minor, such as adding a small bonus to hit, or completely change the technique, such as replacing a regular shot with a grenade and allowing the user to shoot the pin off, or causing an after-image of the character to deliver a follow-up attack.
• Movement Techniques: While all characters can spend Action Points to run around the battlefield, each class has a handful of unique ways of doing it. Examples include the Assassin's Ability to melt into shadows to cross the battlefield or a Gundancer's ability to ride the kick from firing guns full auto to briefly fly.
• Defensive Techniques: These techniques allow characters to stay alive. There's a diverse range of them that allow for increasing passive defensive or just avoiding attacks entirely.

Now that you know the different types of techniques, you should know how to read a technique, each technique will have some of the following sections, depending on the type.

• Name: The identifying sequence of words used to differentiate the technique from the other 700+ techniques.
• Cost: The AP cost required to use the technique, and if applicable the type of AP required.
• Requirements: Necessary conditions for the technique to be used.
• Description: The part of the technique that you should ignore, it has nothing to do with the damage that you will be doing.
• Properties: The non-damage, but mechanical part of the technique, so you can read this. Although these techniques will most likely be Movement, or Defensive.
• Base/Combo: The properties section for Base or Combo techniques, used to determine between the two, or between the uses for the same technique.
• Damage: The most important part of the technique, tells you the dice to roll when you are using the technique on bystanders.

Because action economy is relatively easy to balance, a turn is broken down into phases, which are as follows.

• Base/Attacking: This is the equivalent of the standard action, it is used for attacks and the most powerful support techniques. You only get one base phase per turn, so don't ever use it for improvisation or reloading, because neither of those techniques involve bullets.
• Movement: Your move action, but with benefits. You can use this to do a standard move, if you move less than your movement speed it is pretty cheap, but every square beyond your movement speed will cost you. You can also use this phase for movement techniques, which are generally great, but if you want to use standard movement as well after using one, it negates your movement speed. You only get one of these phases per turn.
• Defensive: This phase is a waste, because you are using your AP for things other than setting up bullets going into people, or putting those bullets into people. You get as many of these phases per turn as you want.

Defenses

Purgatoria's system is pretty lethal, needing only three or four clean attacks to drop character HP low enough to acquire permanent wounds. To balance this out, a chunk of the combat system revolves around being able to mitigate attacks through one of three defensive styles.

• Damage Soak: Damage soak measures how much of an improbably badass person a character is. Generating soak in combat lets characters simply grimace and shrug off injuries that would kill lesser men. This is mechanically represented in a form of damage reduction that decreases whenever damage is applied to the user.
• Dodge Techniques: Instead of playing around with comparing stats, dodge techniques allow a character to simply dramatically avoid the attack without a scratch. As these techniques let players just completely dance their way out of trouble, they're the most expensive to use. Most classes feature some sort of mechanic that allows a player to uses dodges for much cheaper, provided certain conditions are met.
• Deflect Techniques: These techniques introduce new elements into the battlefield to make a character more stylish, and thus much harder to hit. In a sense, this mechanic functional similar to AC in other games, but these boosts are generally very short lived, meaning that players can't simply turtle behind them.
  • Passive Defense: As long as a character has one or more Style AP, they receive their passive defense, a flat deflect threshold based on their greatest loaded style attribute. So stylish characters don't have to waste AP on defending themselves when fighting hordes of mooks, and can save that AP for busting out their wombo combos.

What You Need To Play

• A copy of the rules, or a couple.
• A fistful of d6's, not as much as you might need for Warhammer. But, your group will want a whole load of d6's between the lot of you.
• Some d10's, each player should have a pair for the occasional d100 roll, or to make damage resolution go right quick. I prefer to use three, but that's just for differentiating base weapon damage and perk damage.
• Paper and pencils, unless you are cool and play your table top games over the Internet with people you can't prove aren't computers which have passed the Turing test.
• A battle mat and miniatures of some kind. Makes combat easier on every one.

Other Optional Accessories

• Food & Drinks.
• A collection of John Woo films.
• Imagination!

Character Creation

Character creation eschews a level system in favor of an EXP point buy. Players select an Origin (similar to a race) and class, before redeeming their Experience Points for class features. At certain milestones of spending EXP, characters receive slight buffs to their core stats to represent growing stronger.

Instead of the glaring skill point disparities of Dungeons and Dragons, every class has an equal amount of skills that it can purchase. Instead of leveling up these skills individually, these skills come in themed packs that represent a larger element of the character's abilities getting stronger when purchased. That's right: you can play a melee class and actually have things to do with it's skills, instead of having to relegate everything to the more rougish classes.

Character Creation Process

• Talk to your party, because they will have no idea what their characters will be like either. So, discussing with them at this point is really useful to determine absolutely nothing, except the one brooding nerd in the group is going to play Batman, again.
• Purchase Attributes, each character receives a pool of attribute points to distribute as they see fit. Make sure to do this prior to coming up with your character concept to ensure that your character idea and character in the mechanics of the game are completely different.
• Choose a class, now is the perfect time to choose how you are going to go about putting bullets into people. Ensure that the class you choose for your character requires stats which you have not put more than three points into, this is realistic and shows that you are invested in role playing.
• Select an Origin, just pick the Elf origin its the best. If your GM disagrees that you can't have an Elf in this game because it isn't one of the origins listed in the core rule book, quit. Elves are the best, if they don't exist and your GM won't include them because you expressly need to play an Elf in every role playing game regardless of the setting or genre, they aren't a GM who is not worth your time.
• Spend your starting EXP. Techniques, every other option makes you less effective at putting bullets in people, and therefore should not be given a moment of thought.
• Determine your secondary attributes. Its not that hard: HP = (((2+((1/10)*EXP))*Con)+5), if this equation has too many parentheses for you, leave.
• Pick your starting equipment, what every you do make sure to get smoke grenades. Nothing shows that you understand the setting more than picking up a couple of the most terrifying items in setting and throwing a few in densely populated areas to cause mass panic.
• Create a story. This part is saved for last because it is the least important part of the process, as there is not box for story in the character sheet. Therefore, you are playing a set of numbers, a tabula rasa, and nothing says this more than reacting completely differently to similar situations set in different sessions. If you get along with a character really well, and it seems like the GM is having fun role playing that character, kill them in the next session, let loose your inner George R. R. Martin, your fellow players will appreciate your character's complex motivations and thematic motifs.

Choices for Character Advancement

In accordance with character creation, knowing where you can spend your EXP as a player is as important as knowing which end of the sword goes in the bad guys.

• Attributes:The good stuff, points here increase your dice pools for both AP generation, and skill rolls. Nothing to shake a ten foot pole at, however as you increase your Attributes the cost will begin to increase, leading to diminishing returns for your EXP. In all instances, it is better to increase these as needed through the cheesy use of drugs, equipment, and relevant perks.
• Perks: Highly situational, but very useful, perks act somewhat like feats, but with less of the feat tree bull. Most perks will run your character 1 EXP, however, the more story focused perks will cost your character 2 EXP. Some of the best perks will let you put scopes on everything, substituting perform checks for AP generation, getting bitchin' tattoos with benefits, or becoming nigh unkillable.
• Skill Packs: Diverse, but practically unrelated to combat, unless of course you gobble up the wild card packs with all your necessary core skills. This expenditure of EXP will make your character "more well rounded" and "better for the party dynamic". But, really what these people mean is "not as good at putting bullets into people", which should be every character's priority, especially Brawlers.
• Techniques: The double plus good stuff, used to put bullets into people in combat. Make sure to spend 90% of your points here, or else you won't be effectively using the 700+ techniques built into the system, and that's doing it wrong. If you want to be good at the game, you need all the techniques! Efficient spending is for losers who don't know what it means to have too many options in combat, so that your turns take as long as an epic level wizard casting time stops, like Chronos is his or her bitch.

Playable Classes

This system features 9 base classes and an additional 10 advanced classes, which apparently work similar to D&D's prestige classes. Each class has three branching trees: a standard set of mechanics and two distinct separate mechanics, allowing for an autismally high amount of builds.

Assassin

Every tabletop game needs some sort of an Assassin. As opposed to their more sneaky cousins, the Assassins of Purgatoria are more focused around high-profile dramatic murders than hanging around and slapping tiny bits of poison onto people. This class also boasts tons of katanas. Katana everywhere.

The classes's two unique mechanics are High Profile and Low Profile. The former turns the Assassin into a super stylish murder machine, allowing them to perform feats such as shoot targets enough to turn them into projectiles or slashing opponents with such ferocity that they're reduced to a bloody mist that debuffs enemies. The Low Profile mechanic turns the Assassin into a more lethal Batman-esque character who plays off of the fears of opponents while darting about the battlefield and cutting throats.

Brawler

The Brawler is an inelegant, but beefy melee class. The class features a ton of options for psyching up to such manly extremes that explosions, bullets and knives are little more than pesky distractions. The class features some of the best melee damage in the game and the means to simply wade through deadly combat like a drunken redneck wades through a child's birthday party.

The Brawler's two skill trees are Debilitation and Improvised Weapons. The Debilitation tree turns the brawler into a super lethal WWE fighter, allowing them to cave in enemy heads and break arms like it's going out of style. On the other hand, Improvised Weapons allow the Brawler to grab just about anything from a location and turn it into a weapon. As the Brawler acquires more EXP, these examples can get even more extreme, allowing the Brawler to even uproot telephone poles to use for pummeling.

Commando

Commandos are the Clint Eastwood class of the game. Imagine the flexibility of the D&D fighter smeared with a nice helping of South American Contra and smothered with a generous helping of Cowboy. While they aren't masters of any particular role, they have some of the most diverse ranges of means in which to shoot things, meaning they'll never find themselves in a situation where shooting isn't a valid solution somehow.

If a player is looking for a more cowboy interpretation of a Commando, they can grab the Showdown mechanic, which allows the character to declare a 'high noon'-esque showdown on an unfortunate opponent. From there, a Commando can unleash a barrage of devastating single-target attacks at this woefully unprepared guy(or gal) until they've been reduced to little more than a smear on the wall. Conversely, a Commando may choose to invest in the Trick Shot tree, giving them a massive range of impractical bullet-related tricks they can do. This can range from doing things like ricocheting bullets to hit awkwardly positioned enemies to entirely changing the battlefield by shooting away at things like pipes and support beams.

Detective

Noir themed settings need Detectives like high school proms need bitter virgins. Detectives like solving crimes, and often create a ton more in the process of doing so. When pushed into combat, the Detective uses their forensic skillset to be one of the most support-y support classes in the history of tabletop gaming. This is great, because it means that your party's support can be a rugged man in a bullet-ridden raincoat instead of an obnoxious religious zealot or super-magical prepubescent animu girl.

For area control and frontline support, the detective can use the Crime Scene mechanic to establish crime scene investigations in combat. From there, the Detective has access to a set of tools that allow him to change the investigation focus to provide themed buffs, or start revealing caches of ammo, explosives, and plot coupons hidden within the crime scene. If a player wants to take more of a Sherlock-esque approach to the Detective, they can utilize the Deduction mechanic to start building an investigation which they can utilize to alter the battle with well-timed dramatic reveals.

Gundancer

The Gundancer class is directly inspired by numerous Gun-Fu fighting styles and brings an anime-esque style to the usual grit of battle. Gundancers all practice a unique form of the Gundance, which is like a super aesthetically-minded martial art for automatic weapons. While other classes just spray-and-pray, Gundancers do things like arrange their shots to form flower designs. Additionally, by riding the kick of their weapons Gundancers can soar through the air and do all sorts of impossibly cool airborne stuff.

Using the Gun Fu style, Gundancers can evoke decades of improbably awesome action movie stunts in order to build some of the game's most high-damage and intricate combos. These combos can do things like carry a gundancer across the battlefield while shooting fireworks in every direction. To ensure their survival, Gundancers can use the Gun Sau skill tree to gain access to a bunch of stances that let them fundamentally change how their approach to battle works by doing things like shutting off movement to automatically supplement combos.

Inventor

The City has all sorts of dark recesses full of crazy pre-city technology, which creates a niche for Inventors. While an Inventor may not have the sheer degree of badassary that their peers possess, each one typically features some sort of mechanical suit cobbled together from powerful illegal technology, allowing them to do crazy stunts with the aid of machinery. Inventors are the classes for people that love the weapon system, as their class abilities allow them to do things like combine the effects of guns, tack explosive onto things, and give guns a temporary Steampunk or Cyberpunk makeover to add extra effects.

Inventors feature some of the beefiest abilities for a gun-using class, and have the best set of dodge techniques out of anyone in the game. Their Suppression skill tree reinforces the front-line role of the class, allowing the Inventor to use their machinery to wreck mayhem with things like improbably long bursts of fire or drone swarms. On the other hand, Inventors can use their Innovation skill tree to just focus on pimping out weapons as much as possible to absurdly powerful ends.

Martial Artist

Martial Artists fill the monk archtype within the game. As opposed to classes like Brawler, Martial Artists use a more stylish and refined style of punching things into oblivion. The class also features the strongest airborne game out of all the base classes, allowing them to fly around and act like a bird of prey while plucking people's eyes out and reciting witty mantras. Many of the Martial Artist's moves can be used as either base techniques or combos, giving them a really wide range of potential options for building a combo that delivers 100 punches in a row.

If a martial artist feels like building massive airborne combos and going 'Hokuto no Ken' on people's asses, they can invest in the Honorable skill tree to add tons and tons of punches to every single attack. Otherwise, a Martial Artist can simply employ the Dishonorable skill tree to hit opponent's pressure points and add wicked debuffs and Damage-over-time effects to all of their combos. Super awesome martial artists combine both of these to make super-powerful combos that collapse the opponent's lungs while flying through the air and shouting Atatatata.

Operative

The Operative class is designed for people that like their rogues sneaky and their sneak attacks to be extra-fatal. Operatives are a pure-stealth class, revolving around vanishing entirely, and reappearing only to black-bag several unfortunate souls. Their stealth mechanic makes them difficult to hit and many of their techniques gain added bonuses when used while concealed. If an Operative is played properly, they can often wrap up a battle without being directly engaged by an enemy once. This stresses the need to play properly, however, as an exposed Operative has few options for surviving direct firefights beyond hoping that the enemy is running low on bullets.

Operatives distill much of their murder abilities into the Mark-and-Execute mechanic, which allows them to quietly line up attacks on enemy weak points before evaporating the enemy in a barrage of silenced headshots and neckshaps. If an Operative's cover is blown, they can fall back on the Hit-and-Run mechanic to utilize their insane mobility to travel to effectively anywhere in the battlefield in one turn or less while leaving explosive surprises for anyone who tries to follow them.

Sniper

Snipers do exactly what their name indicates: snipe things. Instead of being reduced to a super boring long-distance single-target-damage class, Snipers function as more of a support, using incredibly well placed shot to do things like shoot down enemy bullets or create cover by shooting loose environmental features. This means that Sniper actually do something in battle besides lie in place and shoot the first people to wander into range, not that shooting people who wander into the wrong area isn't covered by their kit.

If a Sniper is more interesting in directly supporting his team, he can spend EXP in the Overwatch skill tree, which allows him to do things like guide movement with well-placed environmental shots or correct the velocity of melee attacks by shooting the backs of allied weapons. You read that right: Overwatch Snipers can shoot swords to make them hit things. Otherwise, a Sniper can shoot enemies with the Sharpshooting skill tree, which capitalizes on the fact that most enemies can't do much to hurt your team if they're running for cover.

Items and Armor

Equipment

Purgatoria's Equipment system doesn't track individual parts of the body, but rather reduces the entire premise to 5 slots that can contain just about any item. Instead of limiting a character to a single piece of head wear, a character can choose to grab five different pieces of headgear and combine them. For instance, if a player wants a pair of rose-tinted glasses, a gas mask, a rave kandi mask and a cowboy hat, they can easily splice these items together into some sort of bizarre Death Corps party hybrid. This allows for players to focus more on finding the most fun items to supplement their build instead of just trying to slot out every single body part with some sort of static buff like some sort of neurotic dress-up game character hanging out in the world's most illegal pawnshop.

How do you pick the best accessories to be a fashionista murder hobo in Purgatoria? Well, I am glad that you asked. Boot wheels are an integral accessory to all characters, because shoes with wheels in the heels is the most effective method of transport within the city, plus wheels in your shoes are even fresher than Velcro straps. Next, pick up an item which will expand your number of armor sub-slots, because it is integral that you get a double plus good pocket square by devoting all three sub-slots to the flashiest attribute bonus item. Finally, grab a pair of goggles, I prefer sonar because they feel like a mobile version of Morgan Freeman's Batman cellphone vision, so obviously combining the aesthetics of Sam Fischer, with the woeful over engineering of Christoper Nolan's Batman will make you character extra bad ass. Once you have acquired these three items, you'll trump every other party member in style, and you should know by now the most important game play element of Purgatoria is playing homeless sociopath dress up.

Armor

Purgatoria's Armor system gives players a single armor slot, with an additional two sub-slots. Each piece of armor features a built in benefit, and comes with two default sub-slots which provide general benefits; however these sub-slots can be swapped out for more specific benefits. While all armor in Purgatoria doesn't provide direct defensive benefits, it is much more interesting to pick out a pimpin' suit with an extra large pocket square, or a steel exoskeleton with ablative plating and wrapped in barbed wire. Once you've picked the armor that makes sense for your character, or just provides the benefits that you want, then your character can strut your stuff, instead of comparing the trade off for the maximum AC bonus while still having a high enough Max Dex mod to allow for that dex point you'll invest in a level or four.

So, now that you know the basics about armor, lets get into the specifics, and how you should go about getting the best fitted corduroy suit in the entire city of Purgatoria.

• Name: This is irrelevant, you don't need to know what kind of armor that you are wearing, just that it is fresh enough that someone will steal it off of your body before you are even dead, next.
• Class: This is the third most important part of any form of armor, because there is a direct correlation between your level of badassery, and how much the scum, or villains, of the city will want to strip your dying body naked just to get every possible piece of copper krag from salvaging your fresh gear.
• Description: Like the name, but longer, skip. This has nothing to do with how your character will look, or will inform you of the levels of pimpin' style that you will achieve when wearing the armor.
• Properties: The most important part of any armor, as this is the only bonus which can not be swapped out for an even fresher armor sub-slot piece of equipment. These can be anything from defensive bonuses, AP generation bonuses, skill check bonuses, and even attribute bonuses.
• Enhancement: These bonuses are the default when you purchase a default suit of the armor from some shifty grain merchant in District 7, and should be looked at skeptically, as they are more general than the alternative armor sub-slot replacements. You should at least consider replacing these with attribute bonus sub-slot items, due to the benefits of increasing your attributes, increases AP generation, and increased skill pool sizes. However, if the default sub-slots for the armor do what you need, I guess that you can leave your armor plain and boring, it is your choice.

Drugs

The Purgatoria staff do not advocate drug use in real life, but a particular member of the team absolutely advocates vicarious drug use within the safe space of role playing games. So, the drug system within Purgatoria is very forgiving, without focusing on the possible ramifications of overdosing, incredibly harmful combinations of drugs, bodily damage from drug abuse, or possibly deadly withdrawal effects of any drugs that are easy to acquire. As a result, use the hell out of any drugs that your character can get their hands on, particularly if you have invested in the perks which make your character a godlike being with four IV needles in their arm, a fistful of suppositories, and a mouthful of pills and cigarettes. Unless your GM is really original don't expect to get burned, sold duds, or be the subject of a sting operation.

Guns and Weapons

Having the most improbably badass guns is a core requirement of anything gun-fu inspired. Naturally, doing badass reloads at the most improbable time is also a stylistic must. Of course, anybody who's tried to play a scummy scout build in Dungeons and Dragons should realize immediately that tracking individual bullets is the single least fun thing that can be done with weapons. Instead, every single weapon has a unique property that can be activated at the right time. Expending this property is considered a dramatic burst of all the weapon's remaining ammunition and grants crazy bonuses to the situation in which it is used.

The weapons system seems to contain Metal Gear Solid levels of gun porn, featuring all sorts of crazy pseudo-futuristic weaponry including crossbows that shoot pressurized syringes full of a mercury-laden substance and a sniper rifle that uses a microwave reaction to briefly ignite shots into super-heated shots of plasma, melting the fire mechanism and leaving the gun broken after a single high-powered shot. Along with a whole bunch of shitty guns which will break if you hold them wrong, because its only fun if the mooks on the other end of your bullet hose have the shittiest machine pistols in the entire city.

Additionally, players can roll for procedural generation to randomly make guns. This can lead to instances where a series of rolls produces a revolving cylinder rifle with a 6-foot long barrel that shoots bullets with liquid mercury heads. Praise be to Mr. Ghost.

The weapons in Purgatoria can be split into categories based on the relevant central skill used when making attack checks, these categories are as follows; bladed melee, one handed firearms, scoped firearms, two handed firearms, unarmed melee, miscellaneous, and explosives. Explosives don't have a relevant central skill, but each class does have techniques which are explosives related, so if they float your boat, then blow some shit up.

Weapon Properties

Every weapon in the setting has a weapon property, these properties come in two flavors, exciting (Active), and forgetful (Passive).

• Exciting weapon properties will provide you the player with a tasty buff that can be activated prior to an attack, or a currency which can be utilized by specific techniques to provide considerable power on the cheap cheap. Having a single Active Weapon Property (AWP) is nice, but the system gets really fancy when you equip two weapons with the 1H modifier, and get double the AWP for the low low cost of requiring to reload actions to refresh the AWP of both weapons. The unfortunate downside of AWP's is that you must use a reload action prior to using the AWP again, unless you have invested in a class specific reload technique for your character, that reload action is going to take a base phase which requires you as the player to decide when it is more beneficial to put more bullets in your gun, or sword, than it is to keep shooting at the baddies.
• Forgetful weapon properties will provide you the player with an afterthought of a buff, which will be activated whenever certain conditions are fulfilled. These Passive Weapon Properties (PWP) can not be expended, so as of yet reloading a weapon with a PWP is a waste that should not be done. Luckily for you, the exciting player, there are very few weapons in the system with PWP's, and therefore you should not expect to run into one very often, the PWP's which do exist within the setting are all worse than slapping your enemy with a trout, so if you intend to use one I would recommend getting a hold of the old 1.2 rules, then pestering your GM until they let you use the old SVD Tarkus. At which point you can rejoice in the fact that your character from now on will be boring due to the fact that they can not use an combo modifiers, if you want the maximum damage output at all times, so have fun using all of your AP to dodge attacks.

Setting Information

The core rules for the game feature a setting that takes place within a gloomy, walled-in city. Every day life within the city seems to be caught in an endless cycle of secret gangs wars, enabled by the secretive machinations of The Four Gods, an enigmatic set of forces that oversee life within the city. It's unknown if the gods are actually divine, insanely powerful individuals, or just idealistic fronts for some of the city's more influential businesses.

Given the noir-influences of the game, every scene is contractually required to include at least one brooding monologue, betrayal, and plot twist relying on an 'identical twins' explanation for a seemingly impossible crime.

The City

To be finished eventually.
The city of Purgatoria was divided into hierarchical districts, ascending within the city, to keep the plebs from getting to the nice parts of the city where the gods live. If you need a nice metaphor to explain how the city looks, imagine a dirty layer cake made of people and guns.

• District 1: The most well maintained, cleanest, and fanciest district of the entire city. Which means as a character, you will get kicked out of the district immediately, for looking like a scruffy nerf-herder or some other excuse made up on the spot by your GM. If you do get the chance to visit, you should check out the Wicker Gardens, the premiere den of hedonism disguised as a theme park.
• District 2: Located directly below the seats of the four gods, the commute to dist. 1 is the real reason why any one lives here. Supposedly, people who live in this district don't even have to share buildings with other residents, which is a complete lie. If you get a chance to visit go to Santier Street, the Wall Street of Purgatoria, because there isn't any where else to go in the district, and to pretend to be Bane when you ruin the economy of the entire city.
• District 3: A complete conundrum to all; the home of the city's biggest and most renowned club, the most prestigious gun running shanties, and the Fortress-Monastery of the city's local chapter of Spess Mehreens, the 12th Street Knights. No one knows how all of these establishments were green lit for construction on the same square, or how a single square became an entirely separate district. If your GM doesn't let you purchase explosives of questionable legality Guns, Guns, Guns, before a wild night at Club Hivemind, and followed by a riot on the steps of The Royal Hall; make sure to drill for answers about the zoning logic that is behind this district.
• District 4: Do not let the rather high numerical number of this district fool you, district 4 exists as the slums of the entire city. This is probably where your GM will force you to spend most of your campaign, because they just watched the most recent Judge Dredd film, and think that cribbing the entire plot of the film for a campaign will work. If this is so, begin searching for all the Streetside Verses, basically Beowulf combined with the Toynbee Tiles, and wait until you have filled a page of letters before burning the page while maintaining eye contact with the GM.
• District 5: The academic/obligatory shitty weather district. Just when you thought that it was your lucky day when you got accepted into Chappleton University, and sent out your first year's tuition, you realized that this district is basically the city's England, with near constant rain and fog due to some graduate civil engineer deciding that sending the city's runoff water to a single district would be a great social experiment. If you want to meet one of the city's numerous detectives, academics, or just consult the only libraries in the city, you had better bring an umbrella and some rubber boots.
• District 6: Weebs, everywhere. Welcome to consumer central, which looks just like Akihabara, and the home of the Yakuza Wasure. Where if you aren't interested in buying anything, you'd better get out while you can, because the consumer spirit in this district must be infectious, due to how many weeabo zombies there are un-living in this district.
• District 7: This is the district that you go to if you want to actually want to buy anything, because every week vendors have to vacate due to the selling floor of the district shifts randomly, which for some reason keeps most of the weebs out. However, the weeabo influence can not be escaped entirely, as this district is home to the Forbidden City Forbidden Castle, the home of the San Guo, a gang so mysterious, that not even they know when they are leaving their fortress sanctuary.
• District 8: Remember Christmas Town from The Nightmare Before Christmas, yeah, neither did I, but this district is like that. Except if perhaps the inhabitants of Christmas Town were replaced with violent isolationist separatists who have control of the climate control for the entire city. Whomever was in charge of deciding the location for the climate control towers was fired promptly. However, if you do get a chance to visit this district without being shot by angry Eskimos, one of the few working theme parks within the city lies within the district, and people say that the log floe is really fun.
• District 9: The "jail" of the city, which was promptly taken over by the gangs, and used as a training/recruiting ground for picking the best of the best crooks who were caught by the CPF, begging the question of why the CPF keeps sending more criminals into the district. If you get sent here, make friends fast, show that you aren't a candy ass on your first day, and don't drop the soap. Fitting with the clock tower motif of the city, there is an imposing one located within the district, used for housing the best and brightest murder hobos that the PC's can create.
• District 10: Docks, just asking for criminal activity. Just don't question why some one wants to control the docks if they are only used for boarding ships that are affixed, let alone why gangs would fight over this area, but they do nightly. So, a perfect berth place for a murder hobos campaign, 'nuff said.
• District 11: This district is in a tie for the shittiest district of the entire city. Mines, filled with poison gas, with workers paid just enough to afford equipment for the next day, of course in currency which is not valued anywhere by this district, and rumors of bug that can eat through stone. If you need a better picture, combine an american railroad labor camp, with a world war one battlefield, and you should have a pretty adequate understanding of this district. Also, home to the largest weapons manufacturer of the entire city, so if you're stuck in this district it could behoove you to borrow some high grade munitions.
• District 12: No one goes here, just forget I mentioned it.
• District 13: The other contender for most grim-dark district of the city. A sun beaten desert, with chemical waste that will turn anyone unfortunate enough to come in contact with it into what amounts to a rage zombie, and outhouses. If that isn't enough fun for you, there are roaming nomadic bands, who think that these new fellas are stealing their land, and a legendary sniper who just doesn't seem to meet his End when some one gives him a lead nap. All in all, the place that you want to be for any campaigns where the GM decided that the Cohen Brothers works were a good place to start for inspiration.
• District 14: The home of inventors, and the diametric opposite to the stuffy halls of District 6. If you want to see the boring old shit that just brings up more questions about the city's history than answers, this is your one stop shop.

The Gangs

The gangs are the driving force for action in Purgatoria, either the Players will be part of a gang, working against the gangs, or be representative of different gangs out to stop some catastrophe. So here's a quick look at all of the gangs currently in the setting.

• City Police Force: While the CPF will ardently argue that they are the only bastion of justice within the city, they are just as much of a gang as the others within the city. The CPF just happens to be funded by the city, and tasked with keeping the peace, just like many gangs do on their own turf. Luckily for the CPF they are most likely paid through taxes, or the sweaty gold krag that falls out of Big Money's bulging banana hammock during his sets in the Wicker Gardens.

• The Wasure: Being too cool and absolutely not weebs at all the Wasure is not part of the Five Families. This could be due to their reluctance to talk to the gaijin, or the fact that they are secretly run by a board of Elves. All we know for sure is that they are firmly cemented into District 6, and that district is totally their bitch.

The Five Families

In the begining there was the word, and the word was with the gangs, and the word was fucking balls to the wall open gang war! So, when the gangs finally decided to wuss out they got together and signed a treaty which established the Five Families. No one really knows which gangs are actually in the Five Families, so its up to the GM to decide I guess.

• The O'Duffy Family: These potato headed bastards who worship some kind of t symbol, enjoy green clothing, and have suspiciously red hair are absolutely not based on Irish mobsters. Ruled by big Poppa, one must wonder if Matt Ward was brought on to provide consultation in the development of this gang... Until further notice this gang will be assumed to make considerable use of explosives, and be driven by their want for independence of the northern quarter of District Ten from the oppressive Carlotti Family.

• The Carlotti Family: Bust out your best Marlin Brando impression, marathon the Godfather trilogy, and you should have a crystal clear understanding of this gang. The economic powerhouse of the FF, with their ownership of M. Semita the gang seems to be riding the coat tails of Big Money. Carlotti Family members are expected to talk with a particular accent, accentuating the 'yous guys', and wear double breasted suits once made. You get the idea.

• The Tzars: Don't let the name fool you, there are two heads of this gang, and don't you forget it. The Tzars are what you would get if you combined the ideal 20th century anarchists with a proud warrior race. This gang just likes to fight, and when there is no one else to fight they fight themselves. Ideologically this gang is split between worshiping Mr. Ghost, and the Cult of the Iron Ramm, which worships the city as a divine entity, and crafts some rad bullets which bypass some damage soak.

• City Liberation Front: Not to be confused with the CPF, these guys are the militant atheists, who attempted to take over District One, which resulted in a remarkable failure. This gang has been a shadow of its former self ever since, which brings into question why they were invited to be in the big boys club of the Five Families. It is rather obvious by the gang's name to identify the goal of the CLF, but if you want it spelled out, this gang wants to depose the Four Gods in a sort of military coup, and then install a single leader to oversee the entire city.

• Twelfth Street Knights: These suicidal idiots decided that completely disregarding firearms was the most important ideological decision to be made when the gang was formed. Like the knight orders of old, these men and women think of themselves as shining knights in a city filled with darkness, and it is their duty to protect the citizens of the city from the gangs. The Knights rarely take group wide action, and prefer to sit around in their monastery fortress in District Three, watching the city slowly burn from their marble chapel.

...And the Rest

Those gangs which were not invited to be part of the Five Families, yet are more important than the even more minor gangs, but these gangs have very little friends, or are very small.

• The Longhorns: This gang is more like the Knights, however the Longhorns have some ideological differences, such as the only good gang member is a dead gang member, and a unique interest in arming the citizens of the city against their gang affiliated oppressors. The Longhorns can be summed up by a simple idea "The gun is the equalizer in Purgatoria, so everyone should have at least one.". These guys really like to play cowboy dress up, with ten gallon hats, and dirty dusters, but don't take them lightly, if you encroach on their territory in District 13 you'll end up with a bullet in the gut real quick.

• Los Nomadas: Perhaps the original gang of Purgatoria, the the progenitors of the gang are the subjects of the Streetside Verses, but they have lost considerable power when the Longhorns came around and shared a piece of their minds. This gang is also tasked with catering to the digital technology of the setting, which explains why it is such crap, they haven't even figured out how to utilize radio frequencies to transfer information between computers. Now as a player, you should not be frightened of these guys, unless a man shows up calling him self the Matador in which case you should expect to run into this person frequently despite how many times you might have killed, or seriously wounded him.

• The San Guo: Apparently despite creating the current structure which all gangs organize by, this gang is woefully ineffective. While most would think a gang inspired by the Triads would be highly deadly and efficient, the San Guo prefer to stay locked within their fortress in District Seven. Some might say that this is a ruse, and the gang is biding its time until it is the most auspicious moment to strike, but these people are wrong. The San Guo are designed entirely to be that looming specter in the background that the GM can break out for heavy handed plot convenience, such as you need an army to attack the Wasure, well the San Guo just happen to have exactly what you need.

The Gods

No one person knows if the gods in Purgatoria are actual singular living people, organizations that hold a great deal of power, or true deities. But, that doesn't really matter, all you need to know is that there are four of them, and they most certainly aren't based off of the four temperaments.

• Big Money: Motivated entirely by the city's greed, big money is represented by one of those fat Chinese Buddhas sitting on mountains of Krag. The most popular form of worshiping Big Money is making it rain, because if you don't have enough Gold Krag to do so, you really should be worshiping him. As a player, you should be friends with Big Money, because doing so gives you the power to see money that has fallen on the ground.
• Mr. Ghost: Either the product, or the cause of the city's insatiable need for guns, and known by his symbol of a skull missing its lower jaw. Mr. Ghost's agenda is unclear, although if you look hard enough he seems to just want to be the most profitable businessman in Purgatoria, or perhaps the greatest influence on the variety of guns within the city. As a player, you should be a servant of Mr. Ghost, because doing so gives you the power of finding guns that have fallen on the ground.
• Madame Heart: Um, heard of Slannesh? Ms. Heart is pretty similar, minus the whole fop act. The proprietor of many of Purgatoria's vice establishments, most notably those which harbor prostitution. Madame Heart plays a game, spanning the entire city, with each piece representing a person of influence, and she wants to have the strings to pull on all of them. As a player, you should love Madame Heart, because doing so gives you the power of finding out the dirt on people that has fallen on the ground.
• The Singer: Think of your least favorite televised talent competition with an unhealthy dose of suicidal ideation, and that is probably the most apt explanation for what The Singer represents to the city, essentially controlling fame the way Indrick Boreale controls his Battle Brothers! She controls a variety of lounges throughout Purgatoria, as well as running a city wide contest to find the next new thing in entertainment, however this is heavily contrasted by the Singer's seeming lack of interest in anything other than being sad about things which aren't explained. As a player, you should emulate The Singer, because doing so gives you the power to perform your way through two thirds of the social skills, which have fallen on the ground.

Transportation

So, now that you are in the city, you want to get around, either within a single district, or between separate districts. So, here are some confirmed methods of transportation that exist.

• Walking: Bam! Do some calf raises, get to where you need to go, next.
• Trains: The city of Purgatoria has a remarkable rail infrastructure, yet the power source for these trains is never identified, so you should assume that these trains run on whale oil imported from district 10. This is your best way to travel within a district, or between districts if you have the right travel documents. Even if you don't have the proper travel documents, train stations are pretty easy to sneak into, and it's not like they check your ticket on the train... have you ever actually ridden on a train, not a subway, a real train?
• Freight Elevators: The convenient plot device of the over worked GM. These will take you to where you need to go, or close enough that it is irrelevant, right when you need to travel between districts in a timely manner without question or search. Yet, they will disappear, fall into disrepair, or be filled with dirty degenerates who will not let you in when the planets aren't aligned. So don't expect to rely on these, unless your GM is a stickler for playing fair.
• Motorized Carts: Generally not used for mass transit, these will only appear when the party decides that they need some form of wheeled vehicle, like a mechanical Shadowfax. These also run on whale oil, so don't ask your GM too many questions if you find one of these rare and wild beauties, or its under powered engine might sputter out and die. Don't expect these to go anywhere fast, or provide the ability to haul much, as they amount to what are golf carts.
• Cars: Cars are extinct, in all the games that I have played there has been a single car that was seen in the entire city. This rarity is most likely due to the difficulty in converting the car to run on imported whale oil, or the number of vehicular homicide cases. However, if cars are seen they will most likely be described like modern cars, as opposed to cars which could logically developed in the setting, some sort of mechanical abomination like the Model T, due the GM's lack of experience with cars prior to power steering being widely implemented.

Play

As a Game Master

When talking to a friend I was asked a really interesting question, and I would like to elaborate on it here. What kinds of campaigns does the Purgatoria system lend itself to? Now, I have not yet had the pleasure of running a game of Purgatoria myself, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the different possibilities for a game master to utilize. However, I am probably a close minded fool, and there will be much greater number of options than even I can imagine.

• Thriller: Purgatoria is a city of secrets, wheels within wheels, and the players are the perfect means to delve into a vast number of mysteries which run thought the city. You can go small focusing on a single block of District 4, a mining operation in District 11, or a murder on an off shore boat near district 10, where every one is trying to fleece any one else for that score which will get them out of the district. If a claustrophobic mystery isn't really your thing, expand the scope to an entire district, with bigger players and more to loose the movers and shakers will utilize more henchmen, which lets you as the GM work more larger combats into the adventure, if that is your cup of tea. Expanding to a district wide focus will allow for a larger repertoire of secondary characters, and give the players more freedom to explore, but comes with the drawback that you can't spend he same amount of time on specific details the way you could with a narrower focus. The final logical extension of an intrigue focused campaign would be city wide, with major players like representatives of the four gods, and envoys for the heads of gangs, this type of sweeping story will give you the ability to cherry pick your favorite parts of the setting, while giving the players the chance for the most over the top action. But, why choose one? As a GM you could set up an expansive intrigue which moves from a small scope to the entire city over the course of an extended adventure, giving you the power to take the best of each of these as the player characters advance in power.
• Drama: The setting of Purgatoria is designed to be about the player characters first and foremost, any adventure should be about the story that the characters are in the driver's seat of, as opposed to the passengers along for the ride with an omnipresent NPC. Now, if your players are interested in a drama focused adventure, they should give you all the tools that you need to execute on that kind of story, no character in the setting is a paragon of virtue, and if one is brought to your table, test that character. The choices that the players will have to make to stay afloat within the chaos of the city will require that they make hard choices. Take the player character's motivations, and ensure that they are able to be met, but ensure that once the goals have been completed the character will question if the goal was what they wanted in the first place. This type of adventure will require a lot of cooperation between the game master and the players, but I believe that these sorts of adventures could be the most interesting for those invested in role playing.
• Action: Let the bullets fly, and the swords clash, the options for this type of adventure are far reaching as gang members violence is expected. But, gang members is not the only means for players to qualify for such an adventure; police officers, bounty hunters, mercenaries, covert assault teams, and ragged bands of murder hobos are all viable possibilities for player characters. Now once one or more of these origins are chosen for the group it is only a matter of giving the players a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to overcome, and they will set them selves forth to accomplish it, you just need to provide the meat standing between them and the goal.

Elves

There are none. Hopefully, there will never be any.