Work in Progress
Note: Scaling Damage for different setting tones.
For a more heroic tone with near daily fights with monsters, deal bashing damage most often to allow players to more quickly recover.
For dramatic single instances of tension, deal severe or even aggravated damage.
For high-risk climatic fights, deal regular severe damage and rare/low aggravated damage
For a survival focused, grueling journey across multiple days, where multiple threats of damage occur each day, focus on bashing damage with scattered instances of severe damage in each threat.
TBD
Outline:
GM tasks and responsibilities.
preparation (creating a scene and elements of a scene, tying them together) (minor and major scenarios) (including PCs into a story) (planning timers)
actual play (reskining scenes and scene elements) (managing the spotlight) (improv and what to do when improv blanks)
For every action the GM assigns Position and Effect. Position (Controlled, Risky or Desperate) determines what will happen on a fail, Effect (Limited, Standard or Great) determines what will happen on a success.:
Narrating the outcomes of a Character Action
When a player character take an action that has some inherent risk or chance of failure, the GM works with them to agree on the character’s position and effect, as described on the Core Mechanics page. The GM then uses the character’s position and effect along side the player’s final die roll to help determine the narrative that follows the action.
Step 1: Determine the negative Consequences of the player’s action
Using the character’s Position, the GM and player have an idea of how bad the negative consequences of the action might be. Essentially, the less control a character has over a scenario, the worse the consequences might be. However, a consequence only occurs if the player’s highest die failed or was a glance, or if they rolled a Trouble (half the dice are 1s). Troubles cause an additional consequence to occur, also with a severity based on a character’s Position.
Consequence Severity determined by Position:
| Character’s Position | Consequence Severity |
| Controlled | 1 minor consequence |
| Risky | 2 minor consequences or 1 medium consequence |
| Desperate | 2 medium consequences or 1 major consequence. |
Optional Consequences:
- Harm: The PC takes damage from their attempt at the task.
- minor: No damage or 1 bashing damage
- medium: a character is dealt low damage
- major: a character is dealt high damage
- Complication: Something is added to or taken from the scene that might make future tasks more difficult, putting characters in a worse position for the future.
- minor: a complication that creates a new, currently empty or 1 ticked clock.
- medium: a complication that requires the PCs to rush or take riskier actions
- major: a complication that requires an immediate response
- Escalation or Road Block: An event causes a timer to either speedup a countdown timer, or slowdown progression towards a positive objective.
- Reduced Effect: The PC is able to make progress towards their goal, but not as much as they had hoped for. Perhaps they deal less damage than intended to a target, or gain access to an esteemed event but only under heavy suspicion.
- Worse Position: An action settles with you in a more dangerous position than before, meaning future consequences against you may become more severe.
- Use Resources: A character’s resource, such as supplies and equipment, is lost either temporarily or permanently. A weapon is tossed to the other side of a room, a rope snaps and drops into a chasm below, armored is weakened and chipped away, etc.
- Lost Opportunity: The character misses out on the chance to do or get something they wanted. To try again they will need a new approach or additional time.
Player hooks and seeds