#srd

The Backbone SRD just updated to V1.02, which includes a better game sample, a completely reworked introduction, various rewritten passages, and a reorganized flow.

Thanks for all the great feedback so far! Keep it coming!

The Bloom system is a TTRPG framework designed specifically for players who want to focus more on the story and less on complex math (though I know a lot of players also enjoy crunch). It is built to be rules-lite and beginner-friendly making it easy to pick up regardless of the setting you are playing in.

Building a Character Through Traits

Instead of starting with a long list of equipment or complicated numbers, Bloom characters are defined by four traits. These are short descriptions that help summarize who your character is and how they act in the world:

The Main Trait: This is the core of your character, such as being a Carefree Athlete or a Sheltered Heiress.

The Weakness: This is a recurring flaw or problem, like being Easily Distracted or Not Well-liked.

Bonus Traits: These are double-edged swords that can help or hurt you depending on the situation. For example, a Seasoned Troublemaker might be great at escaping a difficult spot but will likely have a poor reputation with people in charge.

Characters also have five core stats—Agility, Heart, Might, Poise, and Wits—which measure their basic skills and mental clarity. Most people are average at these skills, but a high score represents extreme competence.

Swingy Dice, Swingy Outcomes

The way the game handles uncertainty is through a "tug-of-war" style of dice rolling. When a character attempts a difficult action, the player rolls two six-sided dice (2d6). One is called the Bonus Die and the other is the Penalty Die.

The system uses a unique rule where the higher roll is removed. The remaining die determines the result: a Bonus Die provides a positive modifier (+1 to +5), while a Penalty Die provides a negative one (-1 to -5). This mechanic ensures that outcomes are rarely certain, keeping the tension high and the story moving forward.

Abilities and Narrative Tools

Characters in Bloom have five or six abilities defined by general narrative limits rather than strict numbers. These allow for a wide variety of "mundane" expertise. Some examples:

Bookworm: You gain +1 to learn new things through reading. Your photographic memory allows you to perfectly recall any visual information you’ve seen before.

Kneeling on the Pew: You can take a pause and quiet your mind through prayer, removing (Poise roll) Hits’ worth of mental or emotional effects such as Agitated or Angered.

Give the Toy Back: Children, even especially unruly ones, will always behave if you scold them. When in public, you can temporarily gain the aid of all the children present for a single, easy task such as finding a missing object.

Players also manage boons, which are a special resource used to influence the story. You can spend a boon to apply one of your traits to a roll for a +2 bonus or use your expertise to try something that isn't on your character sheet.

Meaningful Consequences

Damage in this system is more than just a falling number; it represents the physical and mental state of your character. Damage is logged as Hits, and if you take a significant amount, it results in an effect.

These Effects are temporary traits like being Dizzy, Fatigued, or having a Broken Finger. Effects work like traits in that they can be used by the Game Master to impose penalties, or by players to explain why an opponent is struggling. To clear an effect, a character must make a successful roll using the appropriate stat to show they have recovered or pushed through the injury.

Bloom is the base system used for my TTRPGs Swellbloom Kids, Loop Breakers, and Touched by the Elements. It is rules-lite, genre-flexible and beginner-friendly, but can also be modified for further complexity.

Bloom uses a 2d6 system, with roll results ranging from -5 to +5. But what I really want to talk about are its most important components: traits and abilities.

Traits are short phrases representing facts about your character or the story. You could be a Skilled Chef, thus gaining +1 on cooking rolls, but in turn find difficulty in facing the Angry Crowd. All with a Dirty Uniform, no less.

Traits can be present on the level of the characters, being applied for the purposes of boosting rolls, but can also represent statuses or injuries (ex. Dizzy, Seasick). They can be applied to objects (a sword is Wreathed in Holy Fire or Passed Down from Warlord Ancestors). Traits can be present in the specific scene (Dusty Furniture, Smog-Covered City Streets). And most interestingly, they can be applied on a meta-level, with the campaign itself having traits (Powered by Friendship, References to ABBA Songs).

You may apply a relevant trait to gain +2 on your roll, among other things, as long as you have enough boons to do so. Traits represent not only truths, but narrative opportunities. In other words, a chance to shape the story and its world.

Abilities add flavor and let your characters do cool stuff. They can be outright magical, for example:

Leap of Faith: You can leap as high as treetops within a single bound. Additionally, you suffer no damage from falls as long as you are conscious.

Or they can be entirely mundane (but still badass).

How’s the Weather: You gain +1 on Heart rolls to distract people with small talk. When you initiate a conversation with someone, they must speak to you, and you can keep it going for (Heart roll) minutes.

While I do my best to give players long lists of abilities to choose from, making up custom ones is one of the fun parts, I would say!

I am especially fond of abilities that introduce a special extra mechanic:

Sharing the Fortune: You gain boons on rolls of +3 or higher rather than +4. You can redistribute your boons to your allies at will.

Spinning Top, Rocking Horse: Once a scene, you can enchant an object as your toy, giving it 2 traits for the rest of the scene. These can be applied like the traits on your character sheet. For example, a wooden stick can become Immune from Burning and Shiny as Starlight.

I've been running campaigns with Bloom for more than 5 years now. I was exposed to The Gloaming Diaries along with Fate Accelerated in 2020, and absolutely fell in love with both. I wanted a "best of both worlds" scenario and smushed the two together, but as I played other ttrpgs I kept adding more and more elements in the form of abilities. Bloom is meant to be modular, so any new mechanics I want to introduce would be folded into the appropriate abilities.

I honestly treat coming up with new abilities as a hobby, with 1-2 more being added to my brainstorming lists every few days. Bloom is my pet project, and I'm elated to share it with you all.

A short time back in 2025, I had a bit of an epiphany around generic tabletop RPGs. On that I think, extends into a lot of SRD documents as well. Namely that we’re using them wrong a lot of the time and as a result, we’re not getting the best out of them. So let’s dive into how to use an SRD! Continue reading Maximizing an SRD