ECHOES OF UR

What Is Echoes of Ur?

Echoes of Ur is a tabletop roleplaying game built around choice, consequence, and the moments that refuse to fade. It uses a single d10 system and a narrative pressure mechanic called Resonance, which tracks the weight of your actions as they reverberate across the strings of fate.

One player takes on the role of the Guide, shaping the world, presenting challenges, and pushing the story forward. The rest make decisions for their characters, knowing the world will respond honestly to what they attempt — not just what they intend.

You roll only when the outcome is uncertain. When something meaningful is at stake. When failure would matter, and success would change the shape of what comes next. If a character cannot reasonably fail, do not roll. If failure would stop the story cold, do not roll.

How a Roll Works

Every roll gives the player 1d10. Additional dice are gained based on how the character approaches the situation — through Qualities, circumstances, preparation, and positioning. You do not add numbers together. Each die is evaluated on its own.

Automatic Results exist outside the dice pool and are counted alongside rolled results after all dice are thrown.

• An automatic failure adds one failure to your total.
• An automatic success adds one clean success (equivalent to rolling 8–10) to your total. Automatic successes never generate echo.
• If both are present, they cancel each other out first before anything is applied.

Outcomes

Every d10 result falls into one of three bands:

Resolving the Roll — two simultaneous checks:

• Did the action succeed? Count all successes (resonance and clean combined). If they meet or exceed the difficulty the Guide set, the action succeeds.
• Did chaos occur? If failures outnumber successes, a Moment of Chaos occurs — a brief, immediate complication narrated by the Guide.

These two checks do not interact. A roll can succeed and still produce chaos. A roll can fail to meet difficulty and produce no chaos at all.

Moments of Chaos

When a roll produces more failures than successes, something goes wrong — small, immediate, and real. A gun jams. A strap snaps. A door swings shut at the wrong moment. A fart is poorly timed. The world hiccups and moves on.

A Moment of Chaos is not a punishment. It is not connected to whether the action succeeded or failed. It is the friction of a moment that did not go entirely as intended. The Guide narrates it in one breath and play continues.

Resonance & Echo

Echo is the unit of pressure left behind when the strings of fate are pulled. Resonance is your accumulated total. The Resonance Threshold is the ceiling: Flux stat + current level.

You gain echo when you roll a 6 or 7, when you force an outcome using an ability, when you activate alien technology, or when the Guide determines you have earned one.

You lose echo after a Resonance Cascade resolves, when you shed it with an ability, when a Quality allows you to exchange it for effects, or when the Guide determines you have let one go.

Resonance is not good or bad. It is pressure. Managing it is managing the distance between who you are now and what a Cascade will make you.

Why Resonance Exists: Stories are not clean. Heroes do not succeed without consequence. Mistakes are not erased by good intentions. Power leaves marks. Resonance ensures choices matter even when you succeed.

Resonance Cascades

When a player’s echo total surpasses their Resonance Threshold, a Cascade is triggered. Before it manifests, two numbers are noted: the total echo that built up, and the overage (how far beyond the Threshold it went). The total determines severity. The overage determines how much players get to shape it.

Once resolved, the triggering player resets echo to 0. Every other player loses half their current echo, rounded down — cascade hardening. The shockwave passes through everyone.

The Guide chooses a domain:

Severity scales 1–10 based on total echo. A severity 1 Chaotic Cascade might be an earthquake that rattles a wedged door loose at exactly the wrong moment. A severity 7 might release a caged monstrosity into the city. A severity 10 might tear open a portal to another world and an alien invasion begins.

Player Overage Rounds: Each point of overage is one round of player input. Players collaborate to add a detail — staying within the domain, escalating rather than contradicting, making the situation weirder, more dangerous, or more chaotic. The Guide has final say.

Cascade Fallout: A permanent change the Cascade leaves on the world. Not a temporary inconvenience — a new reality. A creature pulled through a rift does not disappear when the scene ends.

Surviving a Cascade rewards experience equal to total echo × current level. The greater the pressure allowed to build, the greater the reward for enduring what came next.

Scenes & Bouts

A Scene begins when the Guide or a player declares one — any situation where the sequence of events matters. A shootout, a chase, a negotiation on the edge of collapse. When in doubt, start a Scene. You can always zoom back out.

Group Scenes treat the moment as a single unified effort. All participants roll together, results resolved simultaneously. Best used when breaking events into individual turns would slow the story without adding meaningful choice.

Bouts resolve turn by turn. Each turn represents approximately six seconds. Turn order is determined by either Roll Off (highest d10 goes first) or Body First (highest Body stat goes first).

Each bout consists of an action and, when relevant, a reaction. If the action’s total successes meet or exceed the reaction’s total successes, the action succeeds. Not every action has a reaction — uncontested rolls stand on their own.

Actions available each bout: Attack · Move · Use an Ability · Aid an Ally (grants target +1d10 on their next roll) · Antagonize an Enemy (successful intimidation imposes disadvantage on target’s next action) · Interact with the Environment · Use an Item · Delay (hold for a condition; if condition triggers, act immediately; if round cycles back without triggering, gain +1d10 on your next turn)

Injuries & Death

Every hit that lands causes at least a minor injury. There is no such thing as an inconsequential strike.

Physical Injury Track = Body + Level boxes. Caused by violence, falls, exhaustion, bodily harm.

Mental Injury Track = Mind + Will + Level boxes. Caused by witnessing horror, psychological trauma, psychic attacks, extreme stress, or failure to rest when the body demands it. Mental injuries carry no fixed mechanical penalties — their weight is narrative. A good player lets injuries show through hesitation, paranoia, emotional flatness, irrational fear.

Severity tiers:

• Minor — 1 box. A glancing blow, a graze, a moment of fear.
• Major — 2 boxes. A solid hit. Something that slows you down.
• Serious — 3 boxes. Reserved for extreme situations. Devastating and deep.

When all boxes on either track fill, the character is incapacitated. Physical incapacitation: collapse, unconsciousness, too broken to move. Mental incapacitation: ego death — not a loud shattering, but a terrible stillness.

Death is not a punishment for bad rolls. It is a narrative event. It only happens when it narratively makes sense and both the player and the Guide agree. Death in Echoes of Ur is a door, not a wall — a backup consciousness, a 3D-printed body, a resurrection with a cost.

Plot Armor is a soak pool that sits between a character and their injury track. When a hit lands, the target may absorb it with Plot Armor rather than filling injury boxes. Plot Armor depletes and must be recovered through narrative action — repair the breastplate, rest, rebuild the protection. It does not refresh automatically.

Character Creation

A character in Echoes of Ur is not a blank slate. They already exist in the world — shaped by history, regret, fear, and attachment. Character creation defines what you bring into the moment when everything reaches a breaking point.

There are no classes. Characters are defined by Qualities — each one representing a different aspect of who your character is and how they interact with the world.

Four Core Stats — distributed at creation with 10 points. Each additional point in the same stat costs more than the last: 1st point costs 1, 2nd costs 2, 3rd costs 4, 4th costs 8, 5th costs 16. No stat above 5 at creation.

Quality Categories — each has a capacity derived from core stats. Both positive (+) and negative (–) qualities count toward capacity. Negative qualities are not flaws to optimize away — they create depth, complication, and pressure.

• Body Qualities — physical traits, endurance, deformities, addictions. Capacity = Body.
• Mind Qualities — perception, reasoning, habits of thought. Capacity = Mind.
• Will Qualities — conviction, authority, emotional control, trauma. Capacity = Will.
• Ability Qualities — exceptional traits that bend or override normal limits. Capacity = Body + Flux.
• Expertise Qualities — learned skills and practiced techniques. Capacity = Mind + Flux.
• Background Qualities — origin, caste, affiliation, social positioning. Capacity = Will + Flux.

Qualities

Each Quality is presented as a card with its category header, cost shown as filled/unfilled circles, mechanical text, and a flavor line. Positive qualities marked |+|, negative marked |–|.