Alternative TTRPGs: Kill Sector

Author: Icebrick1

About the System

Kill Sector is a simple, combat focused TTRPG with extensive character customization designed for oneshots (though you could run a campaign if desired). If you enjoy building characters and optimizing, especially if you love optimizing around a specific option or concept, you will likely enjoy Kill Sector.

Complexity: (★★★☆☆)

Strengths

Kill Sector has massive customizability. Kill Sector uses a point buy system, with a standard character having 10 points of “functions”; abilities and weapons you purchase during character creation. With over 900 functions in the Core Rulebook alone, many more in additional documents, and with homebrew being easy to make, you’ll never run out of interesting characters to build. These functions cover anything from simply being better at shooting, to having extra arms, having a body composed of goo, playing as a ghost and more.

Kill Sector is easy to learn. While Kill Sector is quite different from D&D, the turn-to-turn gameplay is not completely alien, and the basics are built around recognizable concepts like rolling to hit, dealing damage and having a certain number of actions per turn. Despite having so many functions, each is independent and not required reading to run the game, the actual rules required to run can be summarized in just a few pages.

Kill Sector is easy to add to. Because each function is independent, it’s easy to think of a cool idea and make one up as a function to share with other people. If you’re the GM and want to have an enemy do something, you don’t need to write it down or deal with complex rules, you can just do it. If you’re a player and you want something that isn’t written down, it’s usually easy to come up with something that works if you talk with the GM.

Kill Sector is low commitment. The basic structure of a Kill Sector game is to make characters survive 2 waves of combat, and end with a battle against a very difficult boss, all in one session. Since you won’t be playing these characters for months on end, if a character doesn’t work out or gets blown to smithereens, it’s not too big a deal. It also means the GM can go all out with their final boss, which is typically “unfair”, but if you defeat them, it’ll be a real accomplishment, rather than being something you were “meant” to do. It also means that if you or your group are not quite sure about Kill Sector, it’s easy to give it a try anyways since a complete experience is just one session and the books are completely free. It’s perfect to slot into your standard D&D game in-between campaigns or when you otherwise wouldn’t be able to play.

Kill Sector is plain wacky fun. Kill Sector’s “setting” is extremely open-ended and undefined, allowing you to fill in whatever you like. While you can play for years enjoying the medieval fantasy setting of D&D, it’s also freeing to explore something completely different, whether that be an abandoned science fiction laboratory, a game of death golf, or the center of a volcano-turned-factory.

System Flaws

Kill Sector is swingy. The game is based around d100’s and a standard NPC has 80 HP before any modifiers. “Average” damage is 1d100, meaning a hit might just lightly scratch the target or instantly obliterate them. For a wacky system designed around oneshots, this variability isn’t necessarily a huge downside, and it can produce some entertaining and exhilarating moments. This can also go for the players, if you have a weakness to a damage type and the enemy gets a good hit against you, you might instantly die if you didn’t invest in defense. To an extent though, if you take weaknesses where you take double damage and don’t invest in defenses then die, it’s kind of your own fault.

At the very least, you don’t have to contend with the swingness of “save or suck” spells instantly killing the boss since the clever affliction system means that harmful non-damaging effects are more likely to work the lower the enemies HP.

Kill Sector has limited GM tools. While Kill Sector isn’t hard to run once you’ve got a gauntlet, the game has no big list of example enemies. For some, they might have no problem custom designing every enemy in the gauntlet and even relish the opportunity to flex their creativity, but people used to just dropping in enemies from the Monster Manual might be a tad intimidated. This problem has been mitigated somewhat over time, as the recent Unidentified Fighting Object zines contain more example enemies and sample gauntlets.

Example Games

The Core Rulebook contains a serviceable sample gauntlet, and Unidentified Fighting Object Issue 1 and Issue 2 each contain another gauntlet, both free.
If you’re interested in Kill Sector, you might also want to check out their Discord server to discuss the game, find games, or interact with Devs.

Links

Core Rulebook: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/260647/Kill-Sector-Core-Rulebook