DANGER CLOSE - v0.99

DANGER CLOSE is tactical military skirmish TTRPG for one or more players. It is designed to generate tense tactical decisions, stories of heroics, bravery and camaraderie, and perseverance against overwhelming forces. See the free online SRD! Supplements, design docs and more on my blog! I'm running a persistent play-by-post Discord campaign of DANGER CLOSE - read more and join the fight ! DANGER CLOSE was built to capture the dramatic moments of tabletop wargames and tactical video games, without the miniatures, complicated rules or hours of bookkeeping. It's a game about fire and maneuver, impossible odds, heroic last stands, and the bonds forged between soldiers who survive them. Your Squad advances through enemy-held Sectors toward its objectives. Each new Sector presents different terrain, threats and opportunities. You might be storming a fortified bunker, sneaking through an occupied city, rescuing a downed pilot, or desperately holding an extraction zone while enemy forces close in. Before making contact, you decide how to approach. Advance cautiously, charge in with guns blazing, or attempt to slip past undetected. Each approach has its own risks and rewards. When the shooting starts, the game zooms in to a tactical Engagement . Each Trooper has a job to do: laying down fire, flanking the enemy, covering a teammate, calling in artillery, or dragging a wounded comrade to safety. Combat is a constant tug-of-war between Momentum and Pressure . Aggressive tactics can break the enemy, but expose your Troopers to deadly return fire. Digging in keeps them alive, but might mean losing the initiative. Sometimes the smart decision is to fall back, regroup, and try another approach. The rules use abstract positioning and a handful of six-sided dice to resolve these decisions. No measuring distances, no tracking individual enemies, and no counting every bullet. A Wargame Built on War Stories DANGER CLOSE is designed to generate stories through gameplay. A rookie who miraculously survives six missions becomes the Squad's lucky charm. Two Troopers who repeatedly save each other's lives develop a bond. A veteran sacrifices themselves to buy the others a chance to escape. None of these stories need to be scripted. They emerge from the tactical decisions you make, the dice you roll, and the consequences you live with. Between missions, your surviving Troopers recover, acquire new equipment, build relationships and gain experience. Keep a Field Report of what happened, and over time you'll have a record of your Squad's victories, disasters and fallen comrades. DANGER CLOSE is setting-agnostic The game deliberately leaves the enemy and the wider conflict undefined. Bring your own universe, armies and imagination. Play as Clone Troopers fighting battle droids in a galaxy far, far away. Lead a squad of Imperial Guardsmen into the meat grinder of the 41st millennium. Deploy an elite team of ODSTs behind enemy lines, or send heavily armored supersoldiers against overwhelming alien forces. Or create your own setting, conflict and faction. The same rules can handle desperate infantry combat, cinematic science-fiction heroics, or entire campaigns of military conquest. What changes is the fiction you bring to the table. DANGER CLOSE draws inspiration from Warhammer 40k (Imperial Guard), Halo (ODST and Reach), Star Wars (Clone Troopers), XCOM 2, and Helldivers 2 . Free Basic Rules The Basic Rules are completely free to read online or download as a demo. They contain everything you need to play complete missions, including Squad creation, equipment, mission generation, tactical combat, enemy threats, injuries, support and progression between missions. DANGER CLOSE is primarily designed for solo play, but also supports cooperative play with multiple players. All you need is a handful of six-sided dice, something to write on, and a willingness to send five unfortunate soldiers into harm's way. The Basic Rules are released under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) , so you're free to build on them. Check out the SRD , or the demo files. Full Version The full version of DANGER CLOSE contains the core rules alongside an extensive collection of additional systems, generators and campaign tools. Everything is modular, so you can use as much or as little as you want. Some of what you'll find inside: Mission Generation Tables for creating Troopers, personalities, backgrounds and relationships, environments, terrain, enemy forces and objectives. Plus a collection of scenario hooks to build missions around. Expanded Combat Additional Hard Targets, enemy behaviors, vehicles, close-quarters battles, room breaching and boarding actions. Make your enemies fight like entrenched professionals, overwhelming hordes, terrifying monsters or elite special forces. Between the Bullets Prompts and tables for the human moments between firefights. The quiet conversations, arguments, gallows humor and promises made before the next drop. Support Staff & Assets Commanding Officers, Evac Pilots and Air Support characters, with their own personalities and abilities, to give your Squad a place in a larger military organization. Zooming In & Out Individual Combat for duels and desperate close-range encounters. Platoon Combat for commanding multiple squads using the familiar combat system. Mass Combat to resolve battles between entire armies. Campaigns & Wars Several ways to link missions together, from short push-and-pull operations and branching narratives to open-ended hex campaigns with shifting front lines. A full Campaign Turn handles recovery, recruitment, resupply, downtime and the changing situation between missions. Build Your Own Campaign Flexible campaign frameworks for tracking resources, intelligence, enemy attention and progress toward larger objectives. Run a mercenary outfit, a military unit on the front lines, an underground rebellion, a desperate evacuation or an entire war. Whether you're looking for a tense one-shot, an ongoing story about a single Squad, or a sprawling military campaign, DANGER CLOSE gives you the tools to make it happen. All illustrated by the amazing HodagRPG. For more updates, check out my blog , my Bluesky or pop by my Discord !