GATEWAYS

A tabletop roleplaying game about solving problems by warping space-time.

You are trying to find or recover a lost treasure using the power of Gateways:
portable portals that allow you to create holes in walls, or teleport
through folds in space!

This game needs a game master (GM) who manages the problems faced
by the players, and one or more players who use their gateways to
solve those problems. Will the portal-plying protagonists be able to
find what they’re looking for and escape safely?

Starting a Game
There are four steps to starting a game of Gateways: Choosing a tool, defining
your treasure, assigning your talents, and knowing the tension.

1) Tool
1 A futuristic, handheld Gateway
While every game involves creating and travelling cannon.
through Gateways, you won’t always be doing it the 2 An ancient mystical tome holding the
same way! Your choice of tool helps define the world secrets of teleportation.
and character of your game. 3 A portable hole folded up in your
pocket.
To choose a tool, pick one of the options in the table 4 Magical chalk used for drawing
to the right (or let a six-sided die [d6] choose for you). Gateways on walls.
Generally, each player will have the same tool, but for 5 A computer interface that warps the
a more chaotic theming, let each player choose their coding of the cyberverse.
own unique tool! 6 A bargain with a supernatural entity,
demon, genie, etc.

2) Treasure

The goal of the players is to recover a lost treasure. This can be anything you can think of as a group,
and knowing what your goal is can be a good way to define your characters and the theme of the
game.

The players and GM together should discuss what it is they are trying to find. Are you cyberhackers
warping through netspace to recover secret data? Are you ancient wizards attempting to rescue a
wondrous artefact? Or will you break into a heavily guarded vault to obtain a prized collection of
antique cans?
3) Talents

Every player can create Gateways, but they also bring something unique to the group: their Talent.
When starting a game, each player takes one of these talents (or two if you have 2 or fewer players)
either by choice, or by rolling a six-sided die. The effects of the talents are described below:

1 Double Agent Once per game, you can counteract the raising of tension. Instead,
describe how the source of tension aids the players.
2 Chaos-Wrangler Once per game, when you successfully open a Gateway, you can instead
choose a result from the corruption table.
3 Forger You have a replica of the treasure. Use it once per game to solve a
problem.
4 Mastermind Once per game, when a Gateway corruption occurs, describe how you
planned ahead for this event and count it as a success.
5 Engineer Twice per game, you may lower the number of dice rolled for a level 2 or
level 3 action by one.
6 Coyote Your tool can be used to create images of Gateways that don’t lead
anywhere. This does not require you to roll, and always succeeds.

4) Tension

Recovering a treasure is not without its risks. In each game, there is a source of tension, something
that punishes the players’ failures, or works to thwart their efforts. As a group, decide who or what
creates this tension. Is it a group of guards working to protect the treasure, a rising pool of deadly
lava, or maybe a rival group of adventurers who have set their sights on the same goal!
 Playing the Game
Once you have created the setting for the game, play can begin immediately, or after some planning.
The players set out to recover the treasure. However,
their plan will hit a series of problems. When All You Have is a Hammer…
Gateways is a game about portals, and
The GM describes each problem (an impassable gap, a players should solve problems using
patrol of guards, a strange maze, etc) and the players portals. Because of this, there are no
will try to use their Gateways to solve it. mechanics for non-portal actions.
Players can fight, throw, sing, and
Each tool has three levels of power, each more persuade as much as they want, but in
effective (and dangerous) than the last. the end it is a portal that will decide how
the game progresses.
Level 1: Create a Hole

Roll 1d6 – On a result of 2-5, you create a person-sized hole in a nearby surface. If the surface is less
than 3m (10 ft) thick, you can step through the hole to the other side.

Level 2: Establish a Gateway

Roll 2d6 – If both dice show a result of 2-5, pick any two surfaces you can see. They are now connected
by person-sized Gateways. Moving through one Gateway will instantly teleport you to the other.

Level 3: True Teleportation

Roll 3d6 – If all dice show a result of 2-5, pick a surface you can see. This is now connected to any
location you have seen before by a person sized Gateway (which functions as in level 2).

Raising Tension

If any of the dice rolled show a result of 6, the action still Tracking Tension
resolves as described, but with a twist. Whether through If you want to allow players to lose,
enemy planning, a mistake by the player, or random chance, the GM can determine that tension
things start going badly for the players. has been raised high enough that the
players can no longer claim their
The GM describes the new risks that the players now face, and treasure. Players should have ample
how the enemy has thwarted them at this step. As tension warning of when that might happen
grows, the players should be faced with more and more (you can decide before or during play
problems to overcome. that if tension is raised a certain
number of times, the game will end).
Of course, high tension is a problem in and of itself. At any
point, players can attempt to use their Gateways to lower tension (creating a hole to drain the raising
lava, convincing guards they have fled, etc).

Gateway Corruption

If any of the dice rolled show a result of 1, the player has suffered their worst fear: Gateway
corruption. Maybe a sprocket came loose in your Gateway cannon, or a crucial word in your spell-
book was obscured by ink, or maybe it’s just plain bad luck.

Interdimensional portals can be risky, and when they go wrong, there’s no telling what will happen!
Roll a 20-sided die and check the result on the corruption table below to determine what goes wrong.
 Corruption Table

1 A New Dimension You step out of your Gateway and find yourself in a strange new world.
You have a new goal: return home.
2 A Great Flood Your Gateway has connected to a strange dimension. Water begins to
rush out and fill the room. This Gateway cannot be closed.
3 Via Brobdingnag You emerge from your Gateway twice the size you were before you
went in.

4 Via Lilliput You emerge from your Gateway half the size you were before you went
in.
5 Ghosted You become incorporeal. You can freely pass through walls and talk to
other players, but can no longer interact with physical objects.

6 But She’s Got a Well, that could have been worse! Describe your fun new hat and
New Hat! continue the game.

7 The Fly Something interfered with your portal. You emerge half human, half
animal (let the group decide together which animal).
8 A Jump to the Left Space-time can be fickle. You emerge from the portal 20 years in the
future. I hope your GM doesn’t mind splitting the party!

9 A Step to the Right Let’s do this again. You emerge from the portal 20 years in the past.
Maybe you can leave objects for your friends to find?
10 You Smell Terrible You may have passed through a garbage dimension. You smell terrible.
11 Gravity Falls For you and you alone, gravity has been inverted. Up is down, so I hope
you are in a room with a ceiling!
12 Well, This Sucks You have opened a Gateway with a pressure problem. It begins sucking
everything in the room towards it.

13 A Warm Glow Everyone always said you were bright, and now there’s no denying it.
You give off a bright light in all directions for the rest of the game.
14 Memory Wipe You may ask yourself, “How did I get here?” but someone else will have
to fill you in. You have lost your memory.
15 The Transporter One goes in, but two come out. You and a copy of yourself both step
Problem out of the portal. And this copy is not your friend…

16 Second Chances Help can be hard to find, but this may not be the help you wanted. You
and a friendly copy of yourself both step out of the portal.
17 Babel You step out of a Gateway with sudden fluency in a foreign language!
Too bad you’ve forgotten all the other languages you used to know…
18 Objectification One of your friends hears a muffled voice. You have become an item
carried by one of the players, with little limbs and a cute face.
19 Regression You are a baby now. Sorry.

20 All Roads This Gateway becomes a fixed point. For the rest of the game, all level
2 or 3 Gateways you make lead back to this point and nowhere else.