The Dark Souls RPG differs from 5th edition D&D in at least four ways

Where? Dark Souls: The Roleplaying GameLast month was the official announcement. Fans received mixed reactions. All depends on What What are you a big fan? You might like Dark Souls? Then you’re likely pretty hyped for a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) based on the original video game. Do you like TTRPGs or not? Well, then you’re likely a little more blasé about yet another sourcebook for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Steamforged Games shared some key information about TTRPG fandom on Wednesday, possibly sensing the indifference. Dark Souls: The Roleplaying GameDifferent from the bog-standard 5e. These images show a game that is laser-focused upon tactical combat. It even uses a key term from 4th edition D&D, one long since abandoned by the modern version of the game.

That’s right kids: Bloodied is back.

In 4th edition D&D, player characters or monsters that were bloodied — that is, reduced to less than half of their maximum hit points — gained access to new abilities. Monsters became even more dangerous, unleashing new and stronger attacks. It sounds perfect to create a new battle against monsters. Dark Souls’ Ornstein and Smough, a video game fight that changes dramatically halfway through. Steamforged claims that bloodletting can also provide some advantages to players. “It’s not much,” they add, “but it might keep you going that little bit further.”

Even more useful to players, it seems, will be a wholly new concept called “position,” which Steamforged has ginned up as a corollary to Dark Souls’ stamina. And no, it’s not just the flanking mechanic ported over from 4th edition D&D. From Steamforge’s blog post:

5e doesn’t have anything resembling stamina — and introducing it would require an awful lot of bookkeeping for players and Game Masters (GMs) alike.

We decided instead to combine the two values into one value. This is what we call it Position.

Position measures your character health, but it’s also a ResourceSpend to modify a die roll or use special abilities derived from your character’s equipment and class.

Position goes up gradually, as you increase in level, but it’s always finite, and generated randomly at the start of a battle. Using it allows you to do some pretty amazing stuff — but it also makes you vulnerable. It is an important decision to spend it, so mastering how to use it can be very difficult. As it should be.

The next thing is that Steamforged may be completely replacing the 5th edition casting systems with something totally different. They describe the new system as “flexible” and “drawn directly from the video game.” Magic users have a finite number of attunement slots, with various spells taking up different numbers of slots, so you can’t just roll around dungeons carrying powerful magic abilities like Doomguy carries long guns. Each spell has a limit on how many times they can be cast before being exhausted. Steamforged said there will be plenty of synergies with the new position mechanic, but we’ll have to see it all in action to know more.

Finally, you’re going to die a lot in Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game There are no escapes from death. Hit zero hit points and you’re dead. Just like in the videogame, players will be able to respawn at bonfires. Players will be punished with a loss of some human nature. How that plays out in role-playing terms we’ll have to wait and see.

Dark Souls: The Roleplaying GameAvailable for preorder starting Feb. 8. Register for the Steamforged email list.