The Shirtless On A Rooftop (SOAR, for short) Quickstart is now available on itch.io, using d10s and d6s pools, it gives you a look into what you can expect from the full game, as well as everything you need to play and run a game, with 4 premade characters to get players into the game right away, and a whole starter adventure designed to teach you how to run the game for a game master, featuring 6 whole battle-maps, 9 regular enemies and 1 boss type enemy.

One Bad Evening

In the streets of Little Portswell, Crime is in charge.
Be it cops, syndicates or gangs, everyone is out there trying to carve this city so it belongs to them.
Nicole is lost, she has no one else to turn back to.
Her son, Toru, is missing.
Taken as "payment" by a local loan shark.
She tried to go to the cops, but as usual, they were worthless.
So now she only has you.
Go bust some heads for her, and get her son back.
She has no other options.

SOAR in a nutshell

In SOAR the 3 to 4 players each play highly skilled fighters who care about their community, one way or another, from a Greasy P.I. doing their best to investigate things the cops won't to a Scarred Sword wandering the streets trying to do right by the trouble people they come across.

4 Premade Characters

All ready for you to play them, you need only name them and give them pronouns, each comes with advice on how to play them and who is best suited for them playstyles wise.

• Want to own an office? Know what people don't want you to know? Slam someone against a wall with a good kick? Look no further, the Greasy P.I. is for you.
• Do you want to play someone torn between their heart of gold and the obligations to their crime familly? Do you want to treat someone like an improvised baseball and slam them with your bat? Then play the Thug In Turmoil!
• Being cold and distant sounds more like your thing? Want to stand back up, take wounds for other and carry the world on your shoulders? Maybe you want to do all that and sheathe your sword revealing you already cut their tie, then the Scarred Sword is for you.
• You like playing characters on the run from everyone in power? Wanna play someone that knows the city like the back of their hand? Have brilliant plans and make stupid mistakes? And dual wielding pistols while doing gun-kata on top of that? Then look no further and pick the Tracked Agent.

Each character is split into two halves:
SLASH OF LIFE and BRAWL, which are the two subsystems used to resolve conflicts in Shirtless On A Rooftop.

Core resolution system.

Both modes of play use a common foundation to resolve things:

• A d10 roll against a value to determine if an action is Successful or not
• A d6 pool roll to see how successful an action is, with 1-2 being poor successes, 3 to 5 being expected results and above being better than anticipated.

SLASH OF LIFE

Is used when things require a little bit more abstraction, discussions or even fights without battlemaps.
In SLASH OF LIFE, the characters are defined by two things:

• Their Playbook, giving them a place in the world as well as Values they care about.
  As a P.I., do you care about Results more that Connections? Or is it the other way around?
  Eventually, your character will excel at defining themselves around one of these values and abandon the other one, that's life.

• Their Quirks, reflects what sets them apart from other people, in good or bad ways.
  The Tracked Agent is highly capable of thinking on their feet, but they have a knack for getting into trouble at the worst moment.
  Using a system of Spotlight Tokens, you have to engage with the worst parts of yourself to shine when you are at your best, no one is perfect so play it up!.

BRAWL

BRAWL is when we bust out the minis/tokens, slap down a square grid battlemap and put down a whole bunch of enemies for players to fight.
In short, we use BRAWL when Tactical Combat is in order.
They are defined by a few things that set them apart:

• Quick to resolve combat: Turns are clearly structured in a specific order meant to create fast and impactful turns, not so combat can "get out of the way" but so you can do more of it.
  Every ability is laid out in a way that allows you to read it from top to bottom, and resolve it that way, with timing specified when it matters with little interuption possible.
• Kinetic combat based on forced movement: throw someone in a trashcan, into a window or even into a different person, combats are defined by your ability to use the terrain to your advantage.
• Flavorful Actions: You just shot 3 people next to you with your pistols, only one survivor, they are right next to some stairs, you grapple them, roll down the stairs with them and then shoot them twice in the chest to take them out.
  This can all happen in a turn and is in fact, encouraged, throwing someone down stairs deals damage to them, shooting nearby people with the Tracked Agent is part of an optimal turn...

An adventure designed to teach you the ropes

As a GM, this Quickstart is designed to walk you through the process of running this game while also giving you something your group can chew on for a few evenings

• GM advice, both generic and specific to the adventure.
• Tactical advice for each combat, including things to remind players as well as rules introductions when they matter.
• Relationship clocks and NPC info to help you figure out how they feel about the player characters.

You interested?

Then click the two buttons here, one brings you to the quickstart, the other to the Shirtless On A Rooftop discord where you can follow the development of SOAR going forward.