TEXT: THE SANGUINE DYNASTY 
   
  It is an age long past of swords and shields, aqueducts and 
  torches. The Empire of Andorra breathes and grows. The 
  neighboring countries have been swallowed up by war, their 
  citizens turned into slaves of the Empire. Other countries look 
  at the Emperor with a mixture of scorn, awe and fear. For 
  now, all relations are tenuous but there's always the chance 
  that things will go wrong fast. The Empire rarely wants for 
  trade and supplies; the lands are lush with necessary goods. 
  The craftsmen and builders have no trouble finding the 
  materials they need as long as they profess fealty to the 
  Emperor. 
  It's the citizens and slaves who want more than what they 
  have. The Emperor is cruel and callous, their whims changing 
  depending on their current plans. Whole city blocks can be 
  destroyed by soldiers to intimidate the citizens and root out 
  any resistance. There is always the fear that there will be war 
  against other countries or a war against itself. Even the Gods 
  have been banished. You are the only people with the 
  privilege and opportunity to make a difference. You are the 
  Children of the Emperor, sons and daughters allowed to live in 
  the palace. The Emperor has had many children and you are 
  those lucky few allowed within its walls to be groomed for 
  their future plans. But you are not spared their wrath and cruel 
  treatment. The Emperor must die to bring peace to the Empire 
  and the lands, and you don't want to see the Empire destroyed 
  in the process. And you're not capable of bringing them down 
  while they're still in the peak of their health and mind. 
  Killing a god takes time, after all. 
  CHARACTER CREATION 
  As Children, you're afforded a certain degree of freedom to do 
  as you will; your parent doesn't exactly care about you most of 
  the time. This gives you freedom to plan and execute them 
  when you're not being good boys and girls. In a few sentences, 
  write down your character's story, personality, heritage and 
  what plans the Emperor has for them. Children are generally 
  (young) adults, old enough to know how to fight back. 
  Your character has four stats: Cunning, Finesse, Grace and 
  Vitality. 
  Cunning is intelligence, knowledge, intuition. 
  Finesse is doing things carefully and delicately. 
  Grace is social manipulation and deception. 
  Vitality is agility, fighting and strength. 
  Characters start with a 0 in all stats. You can raise two of them 
  by 1 and one of them by 2. You can't add them to the same 
  stat. 
  Characters also start with Health and Stability. Both are set at 
  5. Health is decreased by damage and raised by time and care. 
  Stability represents how mentally sound the character is. It can 
  be spent one point at a time to force things to go your way, or 
  help pull a victory out of a defeat through desperation, but it 
  can never be replenished. Low Stability means your judgment 
  is clouded and your mind isn't so sound; you're more likely to 
  make mistakes or do things the wrong way. 
  HOW TO PLAY 
  Remove the Emperor without giving up the Empire. 
  That's the basic gist of the game. You and your siblings want 
  the people of Andorra safe and secure. You want to rule on 
  your own and salvage what you can. But your actions have 
  consequences, and success would be so much easier if you 
  agree to the demands of powerful people. On the other hand, 
  to promise power, land, people for aid might end up dooming 
  the Empire you want to save. 
  Play is simple and just requires pencils, paper and a few d6s. 
  To do anything, roll 2d6 and add the number of the applicable 
  stat to the result. 
  7 or lower: failure 
  8-10: a weak success with complications. 
  11+: a complete success. 
  A weak success result means that technically what you did 
  succeeded, even if it's rife with results you don't want. The 
  Historian adds complications that result from your efforts and 
  that you can choose to address and deal with. This can be 
  anything from leaving evidence at the scene of your crimes, a 
  diplomat adding their own stipulations to your negotiations or 
  being able to climb a wall but getting spotted by the guards. 
  Success should be attainable but not easy; your teeth are not as 
  sharp as your parent's. You may be educated but you do not 
  know how to use your abilities to their best strengths. 
  Combat and damage follows the same rules. Damage results 
  from a failure or a weak success, depending on if it applies or 
  not. Damage removes points from Health and can be healed by 
  making a Vitality roll when you're not in combat to address 
  the harm or at the rate of a point per session. 0 health means 
  that the character is incapacitated and has to receive attention 
  or rest to recover some health. 
  In case of death, the Emperor has many other children to bring 
  into the palace. Besides, the death of one will serve as a good 
  warning to the others. Feel free to roll up another to join the 
  other Children. 
  THE EMPEROR 
  The Emperor can be male or female, depending on what the 
  players or the Historian feel like. The Emperor has stats too. 
  From the beginning of play, the Emperor always has 6 
  Cunning, 6 Finesse, 6 Grace and 6 Vitality. The Historian 
  doesn't need to roll to use them; these just indicate that the 
  Emperor is capable, smart and healthy. The Emperor also has 
  Health and Stability. Stability represents their grasp of reality 
  and control over their own mind and thoughts. The goal of the 
  Children is to lower the Emperor's  stats and stability through 
  their sabotage, to make them mortal so they can win. 
  RUNNING THE GAME 
  You need 3-5 players and 1 person to be the Historian. The 
  Historian is the game master and also controls the Emperor. 
  When each player has a Child they should answer these two 
  questions: 
  1: what do they fear most about the Emperor? 
  2: what does the Emperor love more than them? 
  The Historian should feel free to come up with other Targets 
  for the Children to focus on. 
  For the Historian: you do not need to roll for anything. You 
  simply react and set up obstacles depending on how good or 
  bad the Children do. The point of the game is not to punish 
  
  THE SANGUINE DYNASTY 
   
  them for rebelling but to challenge them and give them hard 
  odds to overcome. 
  Ideally, every session should involve the Children interacting 
  with the Empire, its citizens and the Emperor by picking a 
  Target near and dear to the Emperor's heart, planning out how 
  to harm it, asking for aid (if they want to), going through 
  with the plan and dealing with the repercussions. 
  Picking and planning involve scouting for knowledge and 
  info and talking over their plan of attack with the Historian. 
  It's a dialogue between the Historian and the players. You're 
  also determining how this will hinder the Emperor. All plans 
  will cost the Emperor one point of stability, but it will also 
  cause their stats to weaken. The players get to choose which 3 
  of the Emperor's stats will have 1 point removed. 
  Asking is when the Children go to sources of aid and try to 
  negotiate for something that would help make their plan 
  easier. Distractions, poisons, keys, guard shifts, anything they 
  couldn't get on their own or couldn't convince others to do 
  things for them. All aid has a price, though, and the price 
  should be something that would cost the Empire. 
  Going through with it involves getting your hands dirty, 
  hiding evidence and cleaning up witnesses. 
  Dealing with the repercussions is very important. When the 
  plan is done, the Emperor will look to see who is responsible. 
  They will come home angry and they will wonder if you and 
  your siblings have anything to do with it. Expect questions and 
  accusations. When all's said and done, the Emperor will 
  retaliate. 
  Retaliation depends on how the plan is committed, who is 
  affected and what evidence and clues are left (if any). The 
  Historian should think of a realistic retaliation depending on 
  the Emperor's Stability and their character and personality. A 
  first retaliation might involve rounding up a neighborhood of 
  supposed resistance sympathizers while a fourth might involve 
  a military purge of citizens to set an example. The Emperor 
  might be spurred into a war against another country or they 
  might just try to bring the Empire down to deny it to an 
  imagined enemy. If any evidence is left behind that points to a 
  Child, then the Emperor is more likely to try and punish or kill 
  that Child instead. If things should escalate in that vein, 
  however... 
  Children who are marked for punishment or death should do 
  their best to escape the palace immediately. They may 
  continue to be in play, but they will have to find safety outside 
  of Andorra or find a sympathetic place to hide. Those who run 
  can ask for aid from where they're hiding. 
  AID AND ENEMIES 
  These groups can be called upon for aid or they can be 
  enemies, depending on how things play out and how the 
  Emperor treats them. 
  The Resistance is a group of citizens and guards who are 
  stockpiling arms to attempt to overthrow the Empire from the 
  inside. The Resistance has eyes and ears everywhere and their 
  infiltration of the Empire can be used to get damn near 
  anything the Children could need. However, they tend to ask 
  for power and control in return, meaning that you will have to 
  share the throne and victory with questionable company. After 
  all, a revolution is just a 360 degree turn. 
  Other countries will offer protection to any fleeing Children, 
  or the Children can talk to a diplomat in the capital. The other 
  countries offer military might and strength along with spies 
  and assassins, able to provide goods and strength to your coup 
  at the cost of future loyalty. They can ask for anything when 
  you have the power. The other countries are: 
  Bayhelm: an icy country to the north in desperate need of 
  lumber and goods they cannot grow, jealous of the prosperity 
  of Andorra. 
  Isenveld: an insular religious country offended by the 
  Emperor's proclamations and banishment of the pantheon. 
  Lycea: a large confederacy of city states who are uneasy with 
  how fast Andorra is growing and absorbing everything around 
  it. 
  Ricton: a southern country who despises Andorra's conquest 
  of weaker countries and exploitation of slaves as cheap labor. 
  The Banished Gods are the polytheistic pantheon of gods that 
  Andorra used to have until the Emperor chose otherwise. The 
  Banished Gods come in many shapes and forms but yearn for 
  recognition, scared of a country under the leadership of a 
  person who claims to be a God. They will ask for worship in 
  return, but their demands may increase. 
  The Old Ones are the primeval nature spirits and terrible 
  creatures that ran free in the world until they decided to sleep. 
  The Old Ones care not for the Emperor, but then again they 
  hardly care for anything. The power and aid of the Old Ones is 
  like fire: beautiful, wild, all-consuming. What will they ask for 
  in return? Who can say. 
  ENDGAME 
  The game can end in two ways. First, they can bring the 
  Stability of the Emperor down to 0. This places them at levels 
  of helplessness at the cost of repeated retaliations that will get 
  worse and worse. The Empire may survive or it may not 
  depending on the actions of the Children and the Emperor, and 
  the remaining citizens might have love or scorn, but this is a 
  surefire way to bring down the Emperor. It's pragmatic to 
  crush your enemy utterly, but it also makes you look no better. 
  Second, the Children can try weakening the Emperor some 
  and then attempting an assassination or coup (possibly with 
  the help of their allies). In this case, the Empire will survive at 
  the cost of a chance of failure. The Emperor will be able to 
  fight back against the Children, but there is still a chance of 
  success and it's more likely that the citizens will view your 
  actions faithfully. If you fail, however, there is no trying again 
  as new Children. The window is closed and it will be up to all 
  the other forces in the lands. 
  After every successful plan, the Historian should ask the 
  Children if they want to proceed to the endgame or if they 
  want to continue with their plans. 
  After the endgame, the Historian should narrate what happens 
  to Andorra, the Children and the world around it to close the 
  story. 
  CREDITS: mad props to the Apocalypse Engine for inspiring 
  me with the mechanics and conflict resolution. Everything else 
  just stems from a love of low fantasy and healthy rebellion. 
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Top Secret Games Two Page Tabletops/The Sanguine Dynasty.pdf