About Tally & Table
Tally & Table is a small gaming site: rules you can read on a phone in under a minute, a score keeper for each game so nobody has to hunt for a pencil, and tools for roleplaying nights.
What we cover
Dice and card games that families actually keep in the closet, starting with Farkle and 5 Crowns, and tools for tabletop roleplaying games that use the fifth edition rules. We add one page at a time, and a page goes up only when its rules and its tool are both done. Later we plan to publish games of our own here too.
Where the rules come from
Each page starts from the publisher's own printed rules, which we link to. We write every explanation in our own words and add our own worked examples. Where families commonly play differently, we say so and label it as a house rule. The full process is on how we write rules.
Who runs this site
Tally & Table is an independent site. It is not connected to any game publisher. Game names appear only so you know which game a page covers, and we do not use publisher logos or box art.
The roleplaying tools and the SRD license
The roleplaying tools use game rules from two free System Reference Documents for fifth edition, both released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The license lets anyone use and build on that material as long as they credit it in the words each document specifies. Those statements are below and on each tool page.
- From SRD 5.1: advantage and disadvantage, natural 20s and 1s on attack rolls and death saves, the initiative rules, temporary hit points, the condition names and effects, the Ability Scores and Modifiers table, and the Experience Points by Challenge Rating table.
- From both, for the character sheet: the proficiency bonus by level, the 18 skills and their abilities, passive Perception, the spell save DC and spell attack formulas, death saves, temporary hit points, short and long rests, inspiration, conditions and exhaustion, and coins. Where the two documents differ (long rests give back half your Hit Dice in 5.1 and all of them in 5.2.1), the sheet follows the version you pick for each character.
- From SRD 5.2.1: the standard array, the 4d6 random generation method, the 27-point Ability Score Point Costs table, background bonuses, the initiative score option, the XP Budget per Character table and its encounter-building guidance.
- From SRD 5.2.1, for the character creator: the 12 classes' core traits and level 1 features, the 9 species and their traits, the 4 backgrounds, the Origin and Fighting Style feats, Level 1 Hit Points by Class, Standard Array by Class, starting equipment, and the weapon and armor numbers used for attacks and Armor Class. The descriptions on each choice are our own short summaries.
Everything else, including every explanation, summary, example, odds calculation and line of code, is our own work. We do not use monsters, spells, settings or text from books outside the SRDs, and we do not use any publisher's logos. The tools are compatible with fifth edition.
Keeping pages current
Rule sheets get revised, and we re-check each one at least once a year. Every page shows the date it was last checked against the publisher's sheet or the SRD.