Native Rules
The Basics
Tales of Mar de Oro is a mid-weight tactical game built on one narrative resolution engine. This page is the vocabulary the rest of the rules assume.
What happens at the table
Play is a conversation. The Game Master describes a situation in the Golden Sea, the players say what their characters do, and the dice come out only when the outcome is in doubt and the answer matters. Most of a session needs no roll at all.
Before the dice, the Game Master says one sentence: what the character is risking, and what they get if it works.
Before your first session
Agree on the campaign premise, starting situation and expected danger, then make characters together. Bring at least three six-sided dice per player, character notes and a way to track Harm and clocks. Use a square grid or position sketch when exact facing and threatened spaces matter.
Players can begin with Resolution and their Calling, then read Equipment to choose gear. Read Personal Combat if a fight is likely, and Fortera if the character has Practice.
GMs should also read Playing Mar de Oro and the Game Master Guide. Specialist chapters can wait until those situations appear. The players choose their attempts; the GM establishes the stakes, follows consequences and need not protect a plot or a preferred outcome.
Native Rules, printed pp. 3–6.
The vocabulary
- Capability — how good a character is with a Skill, expressed as +0, +1, +2 or +3.
- Risk — how bad failure is: Low, Serious, or Deadly. Severity, not difficulty.
- Effect — how much a success delivers: No Effect, Limited, Standard, or Great.
- Harm — injury, described and carried forward rather than subtracted from a pool.
- Calling — what a character trained to be, which shapes their starting Skills.
- Strength — a narrow area of decisive mastery that changes how the dice are rolled.
- Technique — a permission: something a character can do that others simply cannot.
- Fortera Practice — the trained permission to perform Workings.
- Working — a specific, repeatable Fortera operation.
- Capacity and Overdraw — how much Fortera a practitioner can channel, and what happens past it.
- Activation and Reaction: a combatant's turn, and a limited response outside it when a rule permits.
- Cohesion — whether a formation is still functioning as a formation.
- Major Threat: a threat with explicit extra Activations or traits; story importance alone grants neither.
Light until it matters
The core conversation stays light. Exact facing, firearm reloads, Fortera engineering, formation frontage and vessel-scale decisions all have real rules, and those rules only come forward when the table is actually asking that question. Nothing here requires a grid to work, and everything here supports one when you want it.
Where the Native Rules sit
Mar de Oro is a system-neutral setting with its own complete Native Rules, an ultralight 2d6 Resolution Bridge, and conversion support for other systems.