Players on Foundry VTT have also created custom system implementations—though currently the system is only in Spanish, English versions exist through community sharing.
Success is determined by matching dice (sets). 2 of a kind: Basic Success. 3 of a kind: Critical Success. 4 of a kind: Extreme Success. 5+ of a kind: Impossible Success. 6 of a Kind: A perfect, cinematic success.
So download your PDF, extract those cheat sheets, gather your dice, and ask your players one question: "What do you do?"
“The needle spun wild. Solenne held it up to the storm. ‘Where now?’ The compass didn’t point to safety. It pointed to the grave of her first partner – three thousand miles away. ‘Of course,’ she whispered. ‘The one place I swore never to return.’ She stepped into the rain. The compass cracked again. A third direction appeared. That’s when she knew: this wasn’t a treasure hunt. It was a confession.” broken compass rpg pdf work
Broken Compass works best when you treat the PDF as a toolkit , not a rulebook. Take the maps. Steal the Q.T.F. sequences. Ignore the obscure modifiers. The system is designed to be broken—in the sense that it wants you to abandon rigid simulation for cinematic storytelling.
Flipping back and forth through a PDF to check character abilities slows down gameplay.
The explains a unique d6 system called the Fortune System. Players on Foundry VTT have also created custom
Players choose two tags, which define their role and provide fields of expertise.
Unlike D&D, Broken Compass relies on a shared Fortune pool for the party. The involves tracking this dynamically. Create a simple index card or use a dry-erase board. In a PDF viewer like Foxit or Adobe Acrobat, you can add digital sticky notes to the Fortune section to create a quick-reference macro.
The game is built for speed and narrative flow, focusing on the "Fail Forward" principle where failures create interesting complications rather than stopping the story. 3 of a kind: Critical Success
| | Page Count | Description | |---|---|---| | Adventure Journal (Core Rules) | 241 pages | Full game rules, 1999 setting, and a ready-to-play Episode | | Golden Age (Season 1) | 209 pages | 1930s pulp setting, new archetypes, supernatural menace rules | | Jolly Roger (Season 2) | — | Pirate adventures in the Caribbean, dueling and naval battle rules | | Voyage Extraordinaire (Season 3) | — | Jules Verne-inspired Victorian science-adventure | | What If (Spin-Off) | 225 pages | Genre adaptation toolkit for horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and more |
The most common point of failure for new GMs is the mechanic. In the PDF, it looks simple: you spend a point to reroll. But to make it work in practice:
(e.g., Bleeding , Scared , Embarrassed ) impose disadvantages on rolls but also guide roleplaying. Good Feelings (e.g., Confident , Daring , Focused ) grant advantages. Characters recover from Bad Feelings by having a personal, heart-to-heart moment with another PC during a rest scene—a mechanic that beautifully reinforces the adventure movie genre.