How to Play

Chrome & Covenant doesn’t make you learn a different subsystem for every kind of action. There’s no separate combat math, no special hacking minigame, no unique social-skill engine. Whether you’re firing a smart rifle at corporate security, slipping through a subnet on a Datarunning op, or talking a street contact into giving up a name — the procedure is identical.

Learn one roll and you can play the whole game. Context changes the story. The mathematics stay the same.

Every action that has a meaningful chance of failure resolves with a Core Check:

Roll 2d10

Two ten-sided dice, added together. Two dice instead of one creates a bell curve — results cluster around 10 and 11, so a competent character handles routine work reliably and only rarely fumbles the easy stuff. The wild swings of a single die are gone.

Add Your Stat Modifier

Every action draws on one of three Core Stats — Mind, Body, or Soul. Each is rated 1 to 10 and converts to a small modifier:

The range is deliberately tight. Natural talent matters, but it never drowns out training or circumstance.

Add Your Skill Rank

Learned competence stacks on top of raw ability. Skills climb a five-step ladder, and the rank adds directly to your roll:

Apply Situational Modifiers

The GM nudges the difficulty for circumstance. Good gear, careful prep, and favorable conditions lower the Target Number. Time pressure, bad footing, and active opposition raise it. These adjust the number you’re trying to beat — not your roll.

The Target Number is the GM’s shorthand for “how hard is this?” Most of the game lives between TN 8 and TN 14. Anything higher should feel like a moment that matters.

Every Core Check pulls from one of three stats. Which one depends on what you’re doing.

Each stat splits into two finer Attributes used for tiebreakers, prerequisites, and derived values like Hit Points. You build all of this at the table during Character Creation.

Not every challenge is a fixed number. When you act directly against another character — trading fire, arm-wrestling a door open against someone holding it shut, matching wits in a negotiation — both sides roll the same Core Check. Highest total wins, and ties go to the defender.

Combat is just opposed checks in a loop: the attacker rolls Body + their combat skill against the defender’s Body + their defense. A hit, a miss, a block — same math, different fiction. The full sequence, including initiative, Action Points, damage, and armor, lives on the Combat page.

Karma is the resource that lets you bend a roll when it counts. Spend 1 Karma Point to either roll an extra 1d12 and add it to your total, or reroll both d10s — once per roll, your choice. You earn Karma from rolling double 10s, hitting mission objectives, and trading on faction favors.

There are three flavors, and they aren’t interchangeable: