Cottages & Cerberus

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The final version is now released. 

'Cottages and Cerberus' is a new cottagecore monster-hunting TTRPG system.   Inspired by games such as Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and Monster Hunter, you and your group of friends will live out your lives day to day in a cottage in a fantasy realm. You will hunt vicious monsters to gain materials and improve your cottage. The Core Rulebook includes 50+ monsters to hunt and slay, and each monster  comes with a hunt that is taken before the true fight can begin.

Pick up and Play

Cottages & Cerberus is a cottagecore monster-slaying tabletop RPG. The game is simple to pick up but hard to put down. The base rules can be learned in minutes, and since each monster has a hunt— a mini adventure that leads up to the boss fight– you can pick one and start running within minutes. Quickstart characters found in the back of the book reduce the friction of having too many character choices, so players can just choose one and go. But, for those who want to nerd out creating your character and load out, you can spend hours picking the perfect abilities for your character. The rules are easy enough to learn quickly, but varied enough to support a vast array of complex and unique characters.

Spoons 

Spoons are the key resource system in C&C. They are an abstraction of a character's physical and mental capacity. The spoon resource system was inspired by the Spoon Theory, an abstract model created by Christine Miserandino that attempts to explain the energy cost of certain actions for people with chronic pain/illness and mental health conditions. Failing checks and being attacked by monsters cost players spoons, as do some abilities.

Deep character creation

Character creation in C&C is very simple but rich.  Character creation consists of 4 steps: assign your CALM, chose 3 ABILITIES, pick a VIBE and chose either a MAGIC ITEM or a PET

CALM refers to your attributes. These 4 scores (CHARM, ALCHEMY, LORE, and MUSCLE) range from 1 to 4 at character creation. Whenever you make a check, you roll a number of dice equal to one of these attributes. 

Next you chose 3 abilities from the over 300 abilities in the book. ABILITIES can have several tags. Abilities with labels like <ACTION> or <REACTION> are powerful combat-focused skills, while tags like <PASSIVE> or <POWER> denote abilities that offer creative, character-focused uses in and out of combat.

VIBES are the general energy your character gives off. Each vibe offers a way to restore spoons.

Magic Items can grant various benefits. Pets are fully loyal creatures that are controlled by the player. They have a miniature stat block and can be used both in and out of combat.

Cozy Mode 

While in Cozy Mode, you can make checks to do things such as fishing, gardening, crafting, and more. Success grants you Cozy Points. Gain enough Cozy Points and Miss Luna, the goddess of the Moon, will increase your Cottage Rank. In addition, the book presents an optional PC+NPC romance subsystem that is explicitly meant to emulate romance elements found in farming/life sim games.

Adventure  Mode

Adventure mode is the a core part of the game loop in Cottages & Cerberus. After defeating a monster, players gain new materials that they can use to craft items for their cottage. There are over 50 monsters to slay in Cottages & Cerberus. Each monsters contains an hunt, a miniature adventure consisting of anywhere from 1 to 5+ scenes and minor challenges that must be completed in order to face the fearsome beast.

Quick and Brutual Boss Fights 

Fights in C&C are meant to be brutal, intense, but quick. These monster fights are explicitly meant to be BOSS fights, and the rules for combat are built to emulate intense battles. The monster starts each fight with an OPENER before its first real turn. Afterwards, it's the players turn. Players decide among themselves what order they want to take their actions. After all players have gone, the monster activates CLOSER abilities that auto-target based on which character(s) meets  certain conditions.  (As an example, one monster might have an ability that deals damage to the character with the most spoons).