# Boundless SRD tags: #game/rpg/boundless ![[Boundless (cover).jpg|600]] *Boundless* is Fari RPGs' free, openly-licensed core ruleset — the engine underneath **[[Boundless Tides]]** and whatever else the ecosystem takes a hack at. It's a peril-fantasy d6 dice-pool system that crams a complete playable RPG onto two pages, which reads either as generosity or an exercise in self-restraint depending on how you feel about rules sitting around taking up space. The whole thing is light-on-rules, bound-to-the-dark: attributes that cap at 6, gear you track in numbered slots, conditions that crowd out your inventory, and dice that make you feel every bad decision. The **SRD is licensed under the Open RPG Creative License (ORC)** and handed out as a free PDF, which is the part that should interest anyone who wants to build on it. ## Core Resolution The backbone of Boundless is a d6 dice pool where every **5 or 6 is a Hit** and everything else is a Miss. If a rule ever tells you to roll 0D, you roll 1D and only 6s count — the game's way of offering you a lottery ticket while the ship sinks. - **Attributes:** Strength, Agility, Presence, and Willpower. At creation you assign 4, 3, 2, and 1 across them in any order you like. - **Hit Points:** set to **4 + Strength + Agility**. They measure how long you avoid life-threatening outcomes. - **Slots, Items, Conditions:** you've got **10 Slots** for gear (most items take 1, big ones 2, small ones none). Conditions — Fatigued, Sick, Deprived, Poisoned — also claim a Slot, and a condition you already have stacks and eats another one. Conditions clear only through fiction that addresses them, and some are lasting and never go. - **Advancements:** hit a major milestone and you gain +2 max Hit Points and +1 to an Attribute (capped at 6). **Checks** roll dice equal to the most relevant Attribute: 2+ Hits means you succeed (more is better), 1 Hit means you partially succeed or succeed with a cost, 0 Hits means you fail and there is a cost. After a Check you may **PUSH** — reroll all Misses — and eat a new Fatigued Condition as the toll. **Damage and Critical Saves:** harm strips Hit Points or hands out Conditions. At 0 HP, or when every Slot is packed with Conditions, you make a Critical Save: on 1+ Hits you're wounded but standing, on 0 Hits you're down and dying. Every Miss on that roll drops the relevant Attribute by 1, up to 2. **Position** is the game's difficulty ladder, set by how favorable the fiction is: - *Absolute* — success is assured, no roll. - *Good* — a 4, 5, or 6 counts as a Hit. - *Standard* — a 5 or 6 counts. - *Bad* — only a 6 counts. - *Impossible* — no roll is made. A strong plan, the right gear, or an exploited weakness nudges Position up; haste, broken equipment, or poor light drags it down. **Recovery:** a Short Rest of about 10 minutes restores 1D Hit Points; a Long Rest of 8 hours restores all HP and one point to an Attribute. **Magic** takes effect immediately, then you make a Willpower Check — 0 Hits and the spell takes a toll in the form of a new Fatigued Condition. **Combat:** the initiating side acts first, in any order, then the other side, alternating each round. One participant moves a short distance and performs an action. Weapons deal Damage (usually 1D-1 to 1D+3), Armor subtracts a flat amount, and a Shield can be sacrificed to reduce one attack to 1 Damage. Enemies run Weak (1–5 HP), Standard (5–8), Dangerous (8–13), and Deadly (13+) with 1D through 1D+3 Damage respectively. Positioning punishes you: attacking from Bad Position always deals 1D-1, from Good always 1D+3. ## Tools Four little subsystems round out the sheet: - **Pools** — a set of dice (P2, P4, P6, P8) that tracks something changing over time: a **Usage Pool** for an item's dwindling quantity, an **Event Pool** for time left before something happens, or a **Strain Pool** for how long a character holds together under pressure. Every roll shrinks the Pool by one die per Miss (up to 2); when it empties, the fiction changes. - **Fortune Rolls** — frame a yes/no question and roll 4D down to 0D by how likely it feels: 2+ Hits is yes, 1 Hit is yes-but-with-a-twist, 0 Hits is no-with-a-twist. - **Kit tables** — match your highest Attribute to a table of starting gear: swords and shield, crossbow and bolts, daggers and lockpicks, spellbook and holy symbol. - **Details tables** — a grab-bag for fleshing out physique, age, look, speech, and spell flavor (from physical Flame/Stone/Blood to ethereal Shadow/Dream/Fate). It's a system that condenses what other games spread across a hundred pages into a single foldable sheet, and it's designed to be hacked — which is precisely why the ORC license exists. ## Editions *Boundless* isn't one frozen text — the library holds the core rules as a version-family of distinct revisions. This note covers the **Core Rules A4**, the 4-attribute build (Strength, Agility, Presence, Willpower). The library also holds **Boundless (Pages)** and **Boundless (Pages, v2)**, which run a separate **3-attribute** revision (Strength, Dexterity, Willpower) on a different Slots-and-Hit-Points chassis — a distinct pass at the same engine, not merely a different print layout. *All in the library.* Whatever the label, it's all ORC-licensed and free to hack. ## References - [Boundless RPG - Official site (free PDF)](https://farirpgs.com/boundless) - [Boundless RPG (Core Rules) - itch.io (PWYW)](https://farirpgs.itch.io/boundless-rpg) - [Boundless - Core Rules - SRD page](https://boundless.farirpgs.com/) - [Fari RPGs - System Reference Documents hub](https://farirpgs.com/srds)