See below for the rules for each of the different Job Roles you can have in the Colostle. You can keep notes for these roles in your main journal, or you can use the specific Job Role templates which you can download from the buttons below.

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CARTOGRAPHER

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Colostle Cartographers map the wild and dangerous Roomlands, courageously heading out into new territories and surviving, so that they can bring back valuable information to the people of the towns and cities about the lands around their homes.

 

Cartographers are driven by an urge to document and understand the layout and geography of the Roomlands and record their travels in a way that is both useful to themselves and others. And along the way annotating their map and treating it like their adventurer’s journal, gradually building an atlas of the lands they’ve explored.

 

Playing as a Cartographer involves using the Cartographer cards in combination with the Exploration encounter tables in the base rulebook. Firstly, shuffle the Cartographer deck and place it nearby. When you come to an exploration phase in your adventure you will be drawing cards from this deck instead of the primary playing card deck.

 

However, a Cartographer draws 2 cards for each exploration point they have. So if an explorer has an exploration score of 4 they will draw 8 Cartographer cards from the deck.

 

Then it is up to the Cartographer to lay out those cards in a grid before them that makes the most sense and makes their exploration the most interesting. You could choose to do this randomly if you like, by placing the cards face down and then turning them over to reveal your day’s exploration.

 

When placing your cards you must make sure all cards are connected to each other by at least one edge. Also you may not create a layout that is wider than 4 cards wide or longer than 4 cards long. Beyond those constraints you can layout the cards you draw however you like.

 

When your cards are laid out you must consider how any walls and oceans you might have drawn will affect your map: 

 

If you have drawn a wall card, then that wall extends either vertically or horizontally in the direction shown on the card. You must continue this wall in it’s direction on your map, even into tiles you haven’t placed cards into this turn. If a wall would conflict with the placement of another card you must move that card to allow the wall to make sense. You can choose to continue these walls across onto other pages of your map if you want.

 

Oceans must be placed on the outer edge of your map grid. The ocean continues in the direction that the coast card shows.

 

Once your grid is laid out you can now translate the grid of cards into a map in your Cartographer’s Journal. Simply translate your grid into your journal and annotate the map with what you found and what it means. Once this is complete take the cards that formed this phase’s map and put them in a discard pile next to the Cartographer deck. Once this deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile and create a new Cartographer deck.

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Use the suits on the Cartographer cards to cross-reference with the Exploration Table in the Base Rulebook to establish which state the various landmarks are in when you find them.

 

With that phase’s exploration resolved and your story told (either via map annotations or in your adventurer’s journal, or both) you are now faced with the decision of which direction you continue your adventure in, North, South, East or West. Whichever direction you choose, turn to a new page in your Cartographer’s Journal and make a note of that page number. Return to the last page you were on and write that number in the triangle that corresponds to the direction you travelled in. This will allow you to keep track of how all your maps connect together.

 

For example: You finish your map on page 3 and decide to travel North. Your next map will be on page 4, so you write ‘4’ in the North arrow on Page 3. You will also need to write ‘3’ in the South arrow of page 4.

 

If you are able to create a map of 5 pages or more that maps the lands surrounding a town or city, (the town or city must appear on one of the map pages) you may sell that map for 3 treasures to someone living in that town or city.

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RESEARCHER

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Rook Researchers have one of the most dangerous jobs of all, deliberately engaging with and learning about the unique quirks of specific Rooks in order to help other Rook hunters and adventurers survive encounters with them.

 

It was initially thought that every Rook in the Colostle was different, but thanks to the work of Rook Researchers it is now known that there are different types of Rooks, and many Rooks will fall into these type categories. Learning what we can about them is vital information and can be sold to the Rook Hunter’s Guild to help hunters protect the general populace.

 

Playing as a Rook Researcher adds another layer of visual flair and complexity to your Rook encounters, and will allow for the creation of your own personal Bestiary that documents all of the Rooks you have encountered.

 

You can sell this information at Hunter’s Guilds for 2 treasures per Bestiary entry or you can share the Rooks you have discovered with other players so that they can encounter other Rooks of that style and design on their adventures too! Simply scan or photograph your field notes page and share it online, and other players will be able to battle against a Rook that matches your description. They could even role-play it further by saying they found out about this specific Rook type by seeing your information in their local Hunter’s Guild!

 

In order to play as a Rook Researcher, simply start a battle with a Rook as you normally would, using the rules in the base rulebook. After your opponent is created and you are ready to fight, draw a number of cards from the Researcher deck. Draw 2 cards if you are battling a Medium Rook and 3 cards if you are battling a Massive Rook.

 

These cards make up characteristics of this Rook you are fighting on top of the characteristics already established by your Rook opponent creation phase. It is now up to you to combine these characteristics creatively to describe your unique Rook opponent. These characteristics will affect how the Rook looks but also its behaviours in battle. These behaviours might affect your journal writing and how you describe the card draws that make up your fight.

 

With the fight done, (and assuming you are still alive!), you can write up your encounter in your Researcher’s Journal. First you must name your new Rook type discovery.

 

For example: If you drew 2 cards, ‘Underground’ and ‘ Leaping’ you might call it an - ‘Earth Burrowing Springrook (Leapus Terranus)’

 

After naming it, it’s time to sketch what you saw so that others will know they have seen your discovery when they see it. A quick sketch that highlights its key features is fine if you don’t consider yourself an artist, but feel free to make it look really good! Then outline what characteristic cards you drew to make this monster, write down any additional notes and add in the Rookstone it had from the opponent creation section - and your entry is complete.

 

As a Rook Researcher you are trying to make sense of and understand the Rooks and their different types, so perhaps try to look for connections and families within the Rooks you discover. As you discover more Rooks and describe them in your journal you might start to be able to develop a sort of Animal Kingdom classification system with your own unique terminology and language for encoding their abilities and characteristics!

 

Think about other ways you can incorporate these Rooks of yours into more adventures. Perhaps you can sell this information to others beyond the Hunter’s Guild if your story allows it? Perhaps you will start encountering more Rooks of the same type in a certain area, and if so, why?

 

Rook Researchers are some of the most learned and respected members of the academic sector, so get out there and show them your skills!

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INVENTOR

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The skills of a Rooksmith are rare and highly regarded in the Colostle, as only with a Rooksmith are the people of the Roomlands able to take the mechanical wonders of the Rooks and apply them to improve their everyday lives.

 

Working as a Rooksmith involves ignoring the typical rewards a Hunter might gain from taking down a Rook and instead going after the junk that others might leave behind - seeing the potential in it, and recombining pieces in new ways to create new tools, weapons, gadgets and mounts  - or even toys and entertainment!

 

Shuffle your Rook Components deck and set it aside while you are playing. Once you defeat a Rook, instead of receiving the Reward stated by the base rules, you can choose to take a number of cards from the Components deck instead. If you defeat a Medium Rook you may take 2 components, and if you defeat a Massive Rook you may take 3.

 

Make a note of these components in the Component Inventory section of your journal and then put the cards in a discard pile next to the Components deck. Once there are no more cards to draw from your Components deck you may shuffle the discard pile and create a new Components deck.

 

When you are at a safe place in your adventure, such as at camp or in a town or city - you may use your components to begin the process of creating something out of them. You can choose to combine the components with an arm, rookling, helm or mount, or just combine them together to create something separate. Don’t worry about how you connect the pieces together, this is just something a Rooksmith is able to do thanks to their tool kit! 

 

Also, if your design requires small pieces of incidental junk, you can assume you have plenty of these sorts of pieces lying around or harvested from your last battle. Perhaps your design needs a handle or a casing - these sorts of basic generic elements won’t show up in the card deck so you can add those to your design for free. But the major functional parts of your creation must come from the cards you draw. There are also some blank cards in the deck for you to add your own ideas for Rook components and then shuffle into the components deck!

 

Use the ‘Design and Development’ area of the Rooksmith’s Journal to try out sketches and ideas for how your parts could go together, going into as much detail as you like! This area is more rough, imagine like your inventor’s sketchbook. Then when you have a final design draw it up in the ‘Final Prototype’ section, labelling the key parts. In the ‘Design Notes’ below write about how it works and how it might help an adventurer and then in the final ‘Item Ability’ box outline the specific buff your tool might give a player of Colostle:

 

For example: A Rook Compass built out of a gyroscope and vane might add 1 temporary Exploration point to an adventurer’s score once every 4 exploration phases.

 

Think about not making your creations too powerful as that might take all the fun out of adventuring for you or other players!

 

You can keep your creations to use yourself, or you can sell them! You can take your new invention to any town or village and sell it to local adventurers. Your creation is worth 1 treasure for each component that forms part of it’s design. So an invention made from 4 components would be worth 4 treasures.

 

You can also sell your creations to other players by posting your designs online (by scanning or taking a photo of the second page of your design pages) and naming a price in treasures. (When selling to another player you can set any price you like, you don’t have to follow the pricing system for solo play). You might even enter into a bit of negotiation if your customer doesn’t like your price! But perhaps you fought really hard to get the components you needed for this creation!

 

Now get out there Rooksmith, and make a name for yourself as a great engineer of gadgets and gizmos for adventurers out in the Roomlands!

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APOTHECARY

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A Colostle Apothecary forages for ingredients in the Roomlands and then has the unique knowledge of how to combine them together in order to make potions and elixirs, with various effects.

 

Any potion requires 3 ingredients to make: 1 lead ingredient and 2 body ingredients. The lead ingredient dictates what the effect of the potion will be, and the body ingredients together dictate how many doses you will have.

 

On any exploration turn you can choose to go foraging instead of exploring in the standard way. When you do this, use your exploration score to draw that many cards from the Apothecary deck. These are the ingredients you find on your forage. You can keep hold of these cards until you are ready to start making potions with them.

 

When you want to make a potion, first you must designate which ingredient you want to be your lead ingredient. Then, take note of the 2 coloured arrows at the bottom of the card. These colours dictate which colour ingredients MUST be used as the body ingredients to get the lead ingredients effect.

 

If say, the 2 coloured arrows are red and yellow, this means you can use ANY red card under the red arrow, and any yellow card under the yellow arrow. When you complete this, your potion is complete! Total up the numbers in the top left corner of each of your body ingredient cards – this is the total number of doses you have of your concoction.

 

Once the potion is created, and you have noted down the potion in your inventory, with its dose count, the cards are all discarded – so make sure to choose wisely, which cards to keep as lead ingredients, and which to use as body ingredients. Sometimes you might want to use a card as a body ingredient because of how many doses it might give you, other times you might want to keep it as a lead ingredient for its effect.

 

You may only forage from the draw deck, not from the discard pile. Once there are no more cards to draw from the deck, shuffle the discard pile into a new draw deck.

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Now, esteemed potion maker, get out into the Roomlands, forage, combine, distill and concoct - and come back with a range of elixirs to tempt and enhance!