1 | Introduction

In the aftermath of World War II, it was discovered that the wrong combination of chemicals and radiation could grant ordinary people incredible abilities, or transform them into horrifying demonic creatures. Over the next few decades, in their desperate scramble for world domination, the two great superpowers abused this knowledge, loosing monsters of both kinds on the unsuspecting civilian populations of our planet. Now, in 1979, you are one of the few brave souls who have risen up against them in secret, to protect the world from what they’ve wrought. Welcome to RADS.

What is RADS?

RADS is a lightweight system of rules for roleplaying as people with radioactive powers in an alternate version of 1979. The heroes of the story are your Free Rads, seemingly ordinary people who, through exposure to normally deadly radiation, have received the gift of supernatural powers that confound traditional ideas of cause and effect, letting you reshape a portion of reality to your own ends.

Together, you and your friends’ characters make up a cell in the secretive and subversive resistance organisation called The Free Rads, committed to fighting radiation-born monsters called ‘Demons’, the scientists, soldiers and secret Agents who create and control them, people with their own superpowers who have turned Rogue, and civilians with their own powers which disrupt the fabric of everyday life.

Individual games of RADS are called missions. A mission is likely to take around 6-8 hours to complete, and can be split up over the course of multiple sessions of play. Missions are made up of individual scenes, which usually take place across one continuous span of time, in a single location, and have a single overarching goal. A scene tends to take about 15 to 30 minutes to play out.

How do you play RADS?

RADS is a tabletop roleplaying game in which you and your friends create and control characters in a fictional world. Most of the players create individual Free Rads, or FRs, while one other player called the Game Runner (GR) creates and runs the world, and plays all the other characters — the Demons, Agents, Rogues and civilians, collectively called ‘Extras’ — who fill it.

The game proceeds like this:

1. The GR describes the things and events your characters perceive.

2. You describe how your Free Rad (FR) feels and what they do in response.

3. The GR uses the rules to decide whether your actions are possible, how likely they are to succeed, and then one of three things happens:

   1. If you’re attempting something impossible, they tell you why it can’t happen and you can do something else instead.
   2. If you want to do something easy or inconsequential, or if you have some special ability that lets you do something automatically, you just… do it, and the GR describes the outcome.
   3. If what you want is possible and important, but difficult or unlikely, it’s time to break out the dice.

RADS uses dice of varying sizes and shapes to determine how uncertain moments unfold, reflecting the role of chance in the course of life’s events. When you attempt to do something which (as determined by the GR) has a chance to succeed or fail, and has narratively significant consequences for success or failure, you:

1. roll one or more dice,

2. add them together,

3. add any bonuses and subtract any penalties, and

4. compare the resulting number to a target number known by the GR.

   1. If your result meets or exceeds the target number, the GR describes how your character succeeds.
   2. If the result does not meet or exceed the target number, your GR describes their failure.

Whenever you have to roll dice, the rules explain the number and size of dice as ‘XdY’, where X is the number of dice to be rolled and Y is the size of the dice. For example, you might be asked to roll 2d6, which means you’ll roll two six-sided dice and add the resulting numbers together.

Speeds of play

RADS has two speeds of play: scenic time and combat time. For the most part, you’ll be in scenic time. Your Free Rad acts from minute to minute, responding to challenges as they arise and using your Powers to create powerful supernatural effects that reshape reality. When you attempt to overcome an obstacle during scenic time, you choose an approach and test it by rolling dice, modifying the result if you are using the skills and experience gained in your day job.

Combat time is like a slow motion action sequence in a film. Every second is important as combatants engage in furious conflict. During combat time, you take turns to act and try to balance acting quickly, attacking the enemy and defending yourself, choosing dice each round to reflect how your FR prioritises these aspects.

Throughout both speeds of play, your most important resource is your FR’s Energy. Energy lets you turn success into failure, perform logic-defying divine feats and shrug off potentially deadly attacks. Run out, and your character is in trouble.

What do you need to play?

To play RADS you need this guide, a handful of six-, eight- and ten-sided dice (2d6, 2d8 and 2d10 per player, available from any friendly local gaming store) or a dice rolling app, and around 3–5 friends.

One of your group must be willing to take responsibility for the game and do a bit of extra work to make sure everyone else has fun. If you found this game and nobody else volunteers, congratulations! You’re the Game Runner now. Welcome to the club.

What makes RADS unique?

Different roleplaying systems have different pros and cons, and their mechanics enforce or encourage a certain tone and style of play.

RADS features a simple, tactical and setting-rich ruleset with a moderate level of difficulty. It’s designed to tell dark, gritty stories in the sci-fi/thriller genre—think Stranger Things meets Men in Black. Set in an alternate version of our own world circa 1979, standalone missions play out against the backdrop of the Cold War, where the agents of secret government departments present as much of a challenge as paranormal creatures of pure evil.

Your characters are close to the pinnacle of human capabilities in some areas, but only slightly above average in others; they have powers bestowed by exposure to dangerous radiation, which allow them to bend reality, but only within a highly specific scope and only at the expense of their own vital energy; and while the so-called demons they face are challenging to defeat in combat, the secret governmental/military organisations who create these demons for nefarious purposes and independent supernaturally powered civilians can be equally insidious threats.

If you play other games or are designing your own RPG, you are encouraged to shamelessly borrow mechanics or narrative concepts from RADS. Remember, game mechanics can’t be copyrighted or owned, every new idea is a remix of everything that came before, and novelty matters less than you think!

Advice for enjoyment

RADS puts the players in the position of morally ambiguous characters with supernatural powers, fighting people warped into unrecognisable monsters by exposure to nuclear radiation. While these transformations are a work of science fiction, there are many horrifying real-world s of traumatic and deadly experiments conducted on ignorant or unwilling individuals by government-backed agencies. Almost always, these experiments took place at the expense of social outsiders, minorities and disprivileged members of society. Because of the reality-adjacent historical setting of this game, themes of discrimination and social inequality in wider society also have the potential to arise.

Part of the intended appeal of the game is to be able to explore these themes within a safe context, and doing so requires everyone at the table to actively prioritise player safety and support others when they feel unsafe. Below, we outline some things to consider before you start playing.

Safety

Some players may find themselves uncomfortable or upset by events which happen or themes which arise during play. If this happens to you, you have permission to pause or stop play in whatever way you wish. If someone else pauses or stops the game, don’t interrogate them about why they feel uncomfortable. Instead, ask if there’s anything you can do to support them and make them feel more comfortable, and accept their responses.

The author encourages and supports the use of the ttrpg safety toolkit, written by Kienna Shaw and Lauren Bryant-Monk. The tools presented in this kit are intended to aid in preventing players from harm, physical or otherwise, before, during and after play. Using these tools is not mandatory, nor does the use of these tools preclude the use of other mechanisms for protecting player safety.

Use your best judgement: if someone expresses discomfort in a way other than by asking you to stop, even if they do so apparently jokingly, or acts in a way that makes you think they might be uncomfortable, it’s better to stop and check than let someone continue to struggle.

While the GR holds a unique degree of power over the narrative and the rules in a way that other players do not, they are not immune to being made to feel uncomfortable, nor are they solely accountable for the other players’ wellbeing and enjoyment. It is the equal responsibility of everyone at the table to look after one another and work together to create a safe, welcoming environment in which to play.

Prejudice

The world of RADS is very similar to the 1970s in our own universe. Across the majority of our planet at that time, racism, sexism, homophobia and other prejudiced views were prevalent and members of marginalised groups often faced severe discrimination.

When you sit down to play for the first time, your table should discuss how they want to address this in-game. The safest option is to set your game in a world where these issues do not exist and people are not judged based on their ethnicity, physical and mental capabilities, sex, neurodiversity, sexuality or gender identity, allowing your table to play diverse characters without worrying about creating additional challenges or rubbing against sore topics.

Some people find roleplaying games to be a powerful lens through which to explore issues of privilege and prejudice, finding enjoyment and catharsis in stories where characters overcome marginalisation in the course of their adventures. If your table agrees to engage with these topics in this way, ensure that everyone is fully onboard with doing so, and make opportunities for regular check-ins between scenes and at the end of sessions to address any questions or potentially problematic topics that have arisen during play.

If you do decide to embrace period-realistic moral attitudes, be careful when portraying non-player characters who have offensive opinions. While characters with objectionable views may be useful as a foil for underdog protagonists, making such characters overly sympathetic can come across as an endorsement of their views. Don’t intentionally create prejudiced player characters.

The author holds the following statements to be morally indisputable:

• abortions are a woman’s rights
• Black Lives Matter
• it’s okay to be gay
• trans rights are human rights
• Fascists can fuck off

If you cannot agree with these principles or are not willing to prioritise player safety, this game is not meant for you and you are not allowed to play it.