The Concept of Justification

Witchgates follows the idea that the narrative, as discussed by the players, justifies where mechanics impact the game. In its base essence, the concept of justification allows for the “this makes sense to me” flexibility that hard-coded games cannot afford. Here’s a list of some of the mechanics that follow this philosophy:

• Players choose what skill applies for an Action Roll
• Players decide the ultimate success or failure of spell casting.
• Players select what benefits specializing in a weapon provides, allowing different players to use the same weapon in different ways.
• Players can create elements within scenes called aspects. If a player can justify how an existing aspect could give them an advantage, or disadvantage a foe, they can gain gain a die to an action roll or remove a die from an opponent’s roll. The GM can also do this though, to the benefit or detriment of others.
• As Players accumulate skill experience, the experience can be moved to related skills or to gain related traits.
• Players decide their own goals to achieve for additional experience
• Gear is mostly determined “in-the-moment” based a a character’s need. No “I would have had this on me” moments.
• Players can spend resources to have “flashbacks” to retroactively have been prepared for a situation. While a flashback can’t change what has already happened, it allows a player to gain a measure of control within a scene and minimizes the need to plan for major encounters.

Rolling Dice

When players roll dice in Witchgates, they always roll a pool of d6s, up to 7d6. Dice results can be grouped into three Categories:

	Roll Results
6	Hit The character completely succeeds at their task without any drawbacks or consequences.
5 4	Glance The character succeeds at the task, but with some unintended negative consequence. If the task has a reduced effect, this might also be considered a partial success.
3 2 1	Miss The character fails at their task and faces an unintended consequence.

“Trouble”
Regardless of the outcome, if more than half of the dice rolled are 1s, the character causes additional consequence to stir within the scene. When spell casting, trouble causes a spell to splice with the mage. A mage can increase the risk of trouble to include 2s and even 3s in order to gain free glances on their spell casting roll.

Types of Rolls

• Action Roll:
  Used when a player says “I want to do a thing” other than spellcasting. Characters only need to roll when there is a risk of failure – whether that be a lost opportunity or other consequence.
  When a player rolls an action roll, they use the skill and (possibly) specialty that best fits the action. They roll 6-sided dice equal to their level in the skill plus their level in the specialty (if a specialty applies). Once rolled, the highest result determines the outcome.
  If the player character’s skill level is 0 and they have no specialties that apply, then they roll 2d6 and use the lowest result instead.
• Ability Roll:
  Used when the GM says “let’s find out if you naturally resist, avoid, or notice a thing.”
  The GM asks the player to roll 6-sided dice equal to an appropriate ability’s level, plus and minus any modifying dice, and then uses the highest result.
  If the player character’s ability value is 0, then they roll 2d6 and use the lowest result.
  Abilities Rolls are NOT used when a PC has the opportunity to choose how they would act. For example, if the GM says “you see this incoming danger, what do you want to do?” the player would make an Action Roll based on their choice, even if that choice is “I want to avoid the danger by jumping out of the way.”
• Spell Casting Roll:
  Xd6 where X = Mana + Arcana Level
  Used when the player wants to cast a spell
  The player describes the type of spell they want to cast and how they are using their magical Knack.
  The player then rolls 6-sided dice equal to the spell’s ruling Arcana level plus any unspent mana. (ruling arcana represents the arcana with the highest cost within a spell)
  The player then allocates Hits and Glances to the various components of the spell.
  (2 glances can be traded for 1 Hit, and vice versa)

Roll Modifiers
There are several ways in the game for a dice pool to be increased or decreased beyond just an skill or Ability’s level. Here are a few of the most common:

• Spending Stress
  A player may spend 2 points of Stress to gain 1 die to any non spell-casting roll.
• Using an Aspect
  A player can use a scene aspect to add 1 die to their roll, or reduce 1 die from another character’s roll. (NPCs can also use scene aspects against the players)
• Enemy Tier
  If a player takes an action to hinder or prevent an NPC’s action, then they may suffer a penalty equal to the NPC’s Tier level for that action.
  Note that enemies rarely roll for their own actions. The successfulness of their actions often depends on the ability of the players to foil them.

Consequences
When a PC fails a check, or only partially succeeds at a task, the GM gets to push a consequence into the scene – the negative repercussion to the action. The severity of the consequence is up to the GM, but often depends on the riskiness of the PC’s position and the outcome of their roll. The GM may also present options as to how a consequence could play out, and allow the player to decide. The GM’s section Narrating the outcomes of Character Actions goes into how to implement consequences in further detail.

• Harm: The PC takes damage from their attempt at the task.
• Complication: Something is added to or taken from the scene that might make future tasks more difficult and rushed.
• Escalation or Road Block: An event causes a timer to either speed up a countdown timer, or slow down 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Aspects
Aspects refer to in-scene traits that players can call on to influence their own actions and others.

Player Resources

Health
Health represents a character’s current physical well-being. Players have a lot of choice in managing their health; weighing the option to let wounds stack in severity (and take longer to heal) against the option to spread wounds out, at the risk of activating magical splices or falling unconscious.

When a character takes damage, they fill in the damage based on the type of damage taken.
Bashing wounds are recorded with a ‘\’ and represent surface wounds, and wounds that are easily healed and taken care of. Severe wounds are recorded with an ‘X’ and generally represent wounds that require medical attention to properly heal, such as gunshot and stabbing wounds. Aggravated wounds are marked with an astrix ‘*’ and represent extreme forms of trauma, often caused by supernatural assaults. Severe wounds may leave a scar, but Aggravated wounds persist.  When all of a character’s boxes are marked with wounds, the character falls unconscious (or dies if all the wounds are aggravated).

• First, when a box to the right of a splice-trigger is marked, all boxes to the left of that trigger can no longer be changed until they are healed. Ignore splice-triggers if a character is unconscious.
  (Splice-triggers are between every three boxes)
• Mark damage in boxes from left to right.
• Higher damage levels always overlap lower ones. [Bashing < Severe < Aggravated]
• After marking any overlapped damage, a PC has two options on how to mark the remaining damage.
  1) They can choose to mark the damage in the leftmost empty box. (moving the PC closer to unconsciousness)
  2) They can choose to upgrade an existing damaged box to the next level. (increasing the amount of time/effort needed to heal the wound)
• If unable to upgrade damage or fill an empty box, the damage upgrades the lowest box(s).

Recovery
The healing clock is a tool used to heal a character’s physical damage over time.
Given 8 hours of rest, all bashing wounds are erased and a player can take an action to treat character wounds. This medical check is made for the entire period of rest, even if the period of rest covers multiple days (unless the GM declares otherwise). The healing clock will fill a number of segments based on the outcome of the roll:

• Miss: 1 segment in the healing clock (trouble=0)
• Glance: 2 segments in the healing clock.
• Hit: 3 segments of the healing clock

When the healing clock is filled, the player erases all of the segments, leaving a 0-2 segments filled if excess segments were gained by the medical check. They then downgrade all severe wounds to bashing, and all aggravated wounds to severe.

Stress
Stress represents a character’s current level of stress (go figure) and how well they can cope with the events within the current scene. When a player spends Stress or takes mental damage, they fill half of a stress box for each point of stress spent/taken (filling half-filled boxes first).

• Persevere: Spend 2 points to gain +1 die to any roll.
• Risk to resist a consequence. Reduce the severity of a consequence and then spend 6 stress minus the highest die from the appropriate ability roll.
  • Intelligence: Avoid consequences from deception or misunderstanding.
  • Perception: Avoid consequences from sudden events and surprises.
  • Physique: Avoid consequences from physical harm or hindrance.
  • Resolve: Avoid consequences from mental strain, manipulation, or possession.
• Consequence:
  • Splice-Triggers: When a PC player marks a stress box past a splice-trigger, one of the PC’s magical splices activates.
  • Temporary Character loss: When all of a PC’s stress boxes are filled, they are no longer able to handle the current situation and drop out of the conflict. Maybe they are left behind or they run away abandoning their allies. The PC returns to the party when on the next chance to rest. Upon returning, the PC has half of their stress boxes restored and takes a Captivated consequence, as though they had pursued a vocation.

Recovery

• Any box that is only half-filled may be emptied upon taking a full rest.
• To recover filled boxes, a PC needs to take time pursuing their Vocation, a hobby or personal interest that helps them fill fulfilled. A character can pursue their vocation during any period of downtime with at least 8 hours between rest or activities. Alternatively, a PC can pursue their vocation while the rest of the group pursues the action, allowing the player to play an alternate character for the time-being.
  To reduce stress while pursuing a vocation, make an ability roll related to the vocation and erase a number of stress boxes (filled or half-filled) equal to the highest result.
• Captivated: If a vocation roll clears more stress boxes than the PC has available to erase then they become captivated in their hobby. The GM gets 1 dice per excess success to use as a penalty to any future roll from that PC. The PC then selects one of the following consequences from the below list, something that happened while they pursued their vocation:
  • Lost: the character disappears for a few days or even weeks as they pursue their vocation. During this time the PC’s player may play as another character during the game sessions. The player also selects any of the positive captivations
  • Antagonist: You’ve gained a new enemy or rival, someone who is happy to hinder your goals and may actively work against you or help your enemies.
  • Burned Bridge: You lose status with one of your contacts and they are no longer willing to help you. Maybe the person who helps you pursue your vocation is no longer willing to help you.
  • Splicing: Increase the rank of one of your spell splices by 1.
  • Positive Captivations (only selectable with Lost or )
    • Friend: You make a new friend who shares an interest in your vocation and add them as a Contact as with the Contact merit.

Splice-Triggers
Splice-Triggers, represented by the black triangle between stress and health on a character’s sheet, represent moments when one of a character’s dormant splices can suddenly activate. They also act as a ‘point of no return’ for a character’s health, as once damage passes a trigger the player can no longer mark the damaged boxes in front of it.

A Splice Trigger only triggers when all of the boxes before it are filled.

Fortune
Fortune allows a character to notice unmentioned details within a scene that they might be able to take advantage of, or “remember” something they did in the past that prepared them for the current moment, allowing the player to briefly flashback in time to describe what they had done. Spending Fortune is a player action, not a PC action, meaning it can be done at any time. However, the GM must always approve of the desired effect.

• Spend 1 point to add an element to a scene (potentially as 2 dice Aspect)
• Spend to have a brief flashback to describe a complex action that was taken during downtime which is presently relevant. (The GM may or may not decide to briefly roleplay the scene).
• Recovery
  Fortune recovers after roughly 8 hours of rest

Mana
Mana represents a mage’s understanding of magic and their capacity to maintain spells, and is thus an integral tool when casting spells. While a mage can temporarily (or permanently) exhaust their Mana for various purposes, their available Mana also increases the number of dice available when casting a spell.

• Spend to add 1 die to an Ability Check used to resist hostile magic.
• Spend to increase one rolled spell casting die up one value (change a 1 to a 2, a 3 to a 4, etc)
• Invest to create a permanent enchantment, which lasts until you touch the spell’s anchor and restore the magic. (seen enchanting in the magic section)
  • If a spell requires 2 or fewer hits to cast: Invest 1 Mana
  • If a spell requires 3 or more hits to cast: Invest 2 Mana
• Recovery
  Spent, non-invested Mana recovers after roughly 8 hours of rest

Armor
Armor reduces damage from justified sources at a 1 for 1 ratio, regardless of damage type. A player may also choose to spend a point of armor to further reduce damage, but enemy’s can also attempt to weaken a character’s armor, dealing 1|2 damage directly to the armor.

• Spend 1 armor to reduce the damage value of a negatable source of harm from High to Low, or from Low to nothing.
• Spend 1 armor to reduce the damage type of a negatable source of harm from Aggravated to Severe, Severe to Bashing, or Bashing to nothing.
• Recovery
  Armor can be repaired while resting with a crafting check: (Miss damages 1 point, glance repairs 1 points, and a Hit repairs 2 points)
  Some spells may make repairing armor trivial, requiring a spell roll instead to fully repair armor. However to do so requires maintaining concentration on the spell for at least 10 uninterrupted minutes.
  Armor provided by magical effects can not be repaired. Instead, the magical effect must be renewed.

Skills and Specialties

Skills rank from levels 0 through 3 and demonstrate a character’s trained and accumulated experience in general fields of knowledge and experience. When a character takes an action that has some inherent chance of failure and consequence they make an action roll using their skills.

Skills often overlap, but although player may choose one over another, the effect and position may also vary with a slight difference in approach.

Furthermore, skills grow through use, and as such are the main method for player characters to get experience, which is used to either level up the skill or to acquire other traits.

Specialties are the detailed counterpart to skills. Players create their own specialties for their characters to represent that character’s specialized field of knowledge, such as chemistry, parkour, or rescue animal training. When a player makes an ability roll that a specialty applies for, they can add that specialty’s level (1 or 2) to the roll (only 1 specialty can be applied to a roll at a time).

Weapon specialties also provide unique benefits when taken, as described in the Gear section. Essentially, the player chooses what their character’s training in a weapon means in game mechanics (extra damage, easier to defend with, easier to hide/throw, etc).

Players are encouraged to scratch-out and rewrite their specialties as they play multiple games and learn more about the characters they are playing. For example, a player may have made a character specialized in “lock picking,” but later realized the specialty “locksmith” applies better for the character’s tinkering nature.

Magic and Arcana

Magic, though inherently enigmatic, has a loose structure when utilized by mages. With this structure mages are able to reliably create and cast spells. To mages, all magic is a combination of one or more schools of magic; Arcana. Arcana determine what Knacks (magical specializations) and available spell components (building blocks) a mage can have.

Knacks define a mage’s magic. Two mages might have the same level in the same Arcana, and thus know the same spell components, but if the mages have different Knacks than their spells will be wildly different. All mages have the Knack of “self”, meaning that they can cast spells all spells on themselves.

Regardless of where a mage’s Mana comes from or how it manifests, all mages follow the same pattern for creating their spells and manipulating magic.

Building and casting spells:

Mages focus on learning Spell Components, the “atoms” of magic that act like fleeting memories and knowledge that can be pulled together to create a very real magical effect.

All mages know general spell components, which are used to determine the size, target, range, and duration of a spell. Metaspell components can also be added to a spell for an additional effect, such as to gain a free glance by taking additional time to cast the spell or to empower the strength of a spell. Beyond general spell components, mages learn additional components with each level gained in an Arcana.

To build a spell a mage must either focus components on their Knacks, or use explicit Knackless components.  A mage first builds a spell by declaring the spell’s desired outcome, such as a “fireball,” and then rolling dice. Once dice are rolled, the player then spend glances and hits on spell components useful to accomplish the desired outcome. This allows players to diminish or enhance their spells based on how effectively their character casts the spell.

The spell diagram sheet allows players to quickly rearrange glances and hits on various spell components when casting a spell.

Mage Sight

With only a slight effort, mages are able to see the supernatural auras lingering on and left behind by magical creatures, including other mages. It does not let them see what they would not normally see (spirits or invisible creatures), but by seeing somethings aura a mage can gain insight on its nature. However, opening one’s mage sight can be mentally taxing, especially if a mage is overwhelmed by magical auras or sees a particularly discomforting aura – see Attacks on Sanity. As such, most mages only temporarily use their sight when needed.

Gear and Load

Gear is managed when players leave wherever their supplies are stashed, whether that be at camp, in a home, in a vault, or on the moon. Until then, all non-worn equipment is assumed to be kept safe in the stash.

At first, players do not need to declare what items they are bringing with them, but instead declare their “Load,” how much are they carrying on them. A player may then add items to their inventory during play from their stash, or as acquired during a flashback, by marking off gear boxes for the item to use. A player may increase their load by adding found items to additional gear boxes.

• A light load implies that the character has only a few things on them and is thus fairly inconspicuous and can move around without difficulty.
• A medium load has a few more things – the character is obviously carrying some stuff in a large backpack or bag, and it may be a hindrance when maneuvering about quickly.
• A heavy load shows a person is on a mission, carrying multiple bags around with them.

Generally, items will use between 0 to 2 gear boxes, depending on their size.

0) Light items that can easily bundled together and fit in a pocket: coins, a phone, a wallet, a pocket knife, etc.
1) One-handed bulky items: A one-handed sword or gun, a bundle of towels, a stack of books, etc.
2) Items that require two hands to effectively use: a long staff, a two-handed weapon,
3) Items that require a large bag and/or both hands to easily carry: a firefighter’s suit and gear,

Load has a few mechanical and storytelling uses.

• First and foremost, Load determines what and how many items a player can say their character has on them.
• A character may have a worse position or lowered effect due to a higher load.
• A character may be singled out as a target due to a higher load, both by monsters and pick-pockets.
• A character with higher load may have to consider the load when acting around obstacles (swimming, climbing, etc).

Todo: add New Equipment page: redo weapon specialties to and armor section. stressful can’t be negated by armor but must deal bashing.

Resources: Lifestyle and Cash

Character resources are tracked abstractly through Lifestyle and explicitly through Cash.

Lifestyle represents a character’s regular lifestyle expenses, including food, rent/mortgage, clothes, and other comfort monthly expenses. Higher Lifestyles allow players to avoid spending cash for general levels of comfort, meaning a rich PC will likely spend less cash on clothing and food than a poor PC. Furthermore, NPCs may treat characters differently depending on their lifestyle.

Cash represents a character’s available money to spend, both in physical paper and coin and through electronic means (credit cards, checks, etc). Cash is equivalent to the player’s modern currency, with many items costing close to their real-life costs. Cash can be split between “worn” and “stashed” locations. For ease of use, this website uses USD for cash values.

Lifestyle and Cash are semi-interchangeable. At any point, a PC may choose sell their assets and lower their Lifestyle level to acquire 5,000 Cash per level lost after resting. Alternatively, a PC may choose to spend 10,000 Cash to increase their assets and raise their Lifestyle. Both options are likely to impact the relationships in a PC’s backstory, for better or worse. They also represent a change to a character’s income source (such as a promotion, new source of income, demotion, etc).

Advancement

Gaining XP
When a player fails a roll they may fill one of the small circles beside the skill/Arcana with an X, denoting potential XP. At the end of the session, players choose 4 Xs to fill in completely, turning them into experience, and erase the remainder.

Characters can also gain General XP at the end of each session for making noticeable headway on the main story, their character’s personal goals, or for having a particularly climatic moment for their character. The GM will award characters 0-3 XP depending on the situation and how they want to pace character progression, but players are encouraged to nominate each other for General XP. General XP can be used towards anything without justification: skill levels, arcana levels, or other traits.

Leveling a Skill or Arcana
When all of the circles beside a skill or Arcana are filled, that skill/Arcana levels up and all of the circles beside it are emptied. Players may also ask the GM for permission to move XP from one skill to another in order to level up that skill, as long as they can justify how the experience from that skill applies for the other.

Lastly, players, players can discuss moving XP from one skill to another skill in order to level it up. Following the concept of justification, the players must be able to explain how their experience in one field applied to the other.

Gaining Traits with XP

Players can use XP from their skills, arcana, or general XP tracker towards other traits as listed below. To use XP from skills and an arcana, the player needs to justify how the experience in those fields translate to the to-be acquired trait. For example, a player might use 5 XP from survival and 5 XP from Brute Force to increase their character’s physique. A player can likewise move XP from one skill to another with a good enough explanation.

Trait	Experience Cost
Attribute	10
Specialty	6
Merit*	2 * Value
Intimate Connection	4
Knack or Make a component Knackless	4
Mana / Fortune	6
Lower Splice by 1 Rank**	3* Current Rank
Level 1 New Arcana  .	8

_{** Must include at least 4 Experience from splice’s Arcana}

Character Sheet

Printable links
Character Sheet
Spell Casting Sheet

Handling Combat

There is no separate system to handle combat. When NPCs take an action that might harm a PC, the PC is allowed a reaction. The damage that the NPC deals (zero, low, or high) is determined by the action and position of the NPC, and the final outcome of the player’s roll.

If players want even turn distribution, the GM can decide to alternate between the NPC and PC actions, whereby first all of the NPCs take their actions (with PCs reacting/rolling only when the NPCs actions are directed at them), and then all of the PCs take their own actions.