Introduction

This game is not about mighty heroes or powerful wizards. It is about normal, fragile people who have found themselves entangled in the supernatural. Magic is unstable, chaotic, and mysterious. Injury is gruesome, death is frightening, and nobody knows what comes after. In this game, challenges are not solved through glorious heroism, but are overcome through careful planning and cunning schemes.

This game is played with a group of 3 to 6 friends. These players each play the role of a fictional character, except one; one player instead takes on the role of The World, playing the role of the environment and all other characters and creatures that exist within it. The players describe what their characters want to do, and The World describes how the fiction reacts to those decisions, provides meaningful choices, and the cycle continues.

Character Creation

Traits describe your character’s most defining features, both physical and mental, and may be used for both good and ill. Choose three traits: one that describes your body, one that describes your personality, and one more of your choice that describes something interesting about yourself.

Bonds describe your character’s relationships with factions and non-player characters. You may call upon your bonds in times of need for favors and support, provided you meet their demands. Not all bonds are friendly, but all are useful. Choose three bonds: one faction you belong to, one mentor or friend, and one rival or enemy.

Skills describe your character’s areas of expertise, and are used to help overcome challenges. Choose three skills: one learned through one of your bonds, beginning at +3 proficiency, one learned out of necessity and hardship, beginning at +2 proficiency, and one learned in the pursuit of a passion, beginning at +1 proficiency.

You have in your possession the following items:

• For each of your three bonds, one item related to that bond
• For each of your three skills, one item related to that skill
• One consumable item, such as a bundle of arrows or a jar of lamp oil
• A bag that can hold five items

Core Rules

Checks

Overcoming challenges requires time, tools, skill, and sometimes help. What you have at your disposal determines your likelihood of success.

You have time if you have both the time to formulate a plan and the time to enact it with only minor interruption.

You have tools if you have access to the proper tools or weapons appropriate for the challenge, or if your natural faculties are sufficient.

You have skill if you have proficiency in a skill appropriate for the challenge.

You have help if you have an ally who also has time, tools, or skill, provided they describe how they are helping.

• If you have neither time, tools, nor skill, failure is certain. No check is required.
• If you have only one of time, tools, or skill, but you also have help, failure is likely but not certain. You may make a check with disadvantage.
• If you have two of time, tools, or skill, neither success nor failure are certain. You may make a check.
• If you have two of time, tools, or skill, and you also have help, success is likely but not certain. You may make a check with advantage.
• If you have time, tools, and skill, success is certain. No check is required.

To make a check, follow this procedure:

1. Select an appropriate skill you have proficiency with, or name one you don’t have to practice it.
2. Roll the d20. If the check is made with advantage, roll twice and keep the higher result. If the check is made with disadvantage, roll twice and keep the lower result.
3. Add the selected skill’s proficiency, if any.
4. Subtract penalties, such as those from wounds or jinx.
5. Determine the outcome of the check: 8 or less indicates a bad outcome, 9 to 17 indicates a messy outcome, and 18 or more indicates a good outcome.
6. Mark experience for the selected skill, depending on the outcome: two experience for a bad outcome, and one experience for a messy outcome.

A good outcome doesn’t always mean the player accomplishes what they intended, but it does mean the consequences are in their favor. Likewise, a bad outcome doesn’t necessarily mean failure, but rather indicates a setback or that a cost must be paid. Messy outcomes should be a mix of both: the player should get something good, but should also be faced with additional challenges and complications.

Natural 1 & 20

When making a check, if the natural result of the d20 roll is exactly 1, mark an additional experience for the skill, and all of your traits that have been invoked to hinder regain the ability to do so.

When making a check, if the natural result of the d20 roll is exactly 20, mark an additional experience for the skill, and all of your traits that have been invoked to help regain the ability to do so.

If the check was made with advantage or disadvantage, only consider the natural result of the die whose result was kept.

Time

Gameplay is divided into rounds and actions in order to keep track of time and grant each player chances to take actions. The length of time a round represents is typically 30 minutes, or during action sequences, reduced to 6 seconds, but this is variable. The World is responsible for adjusting the length of rounds to fit the pace of the narrative.

Each round, each character has three actions. An action represents time equal to one third of a round. Characters can spend one or more actions to perform tasks or activities that occupy that span of time. The World is responsible for making sure each player has had chances to spend their actions before proceeding to the next round. Actions are not required to be taken in any particular order.

The number of actions any given task costs should be determined based on the amount of time those actions represent and a reasonable estimate for how much time that task takes. For example, during an action sequence in which the round is 6 seconds long (and thus an action would be 2 seconds), drinking a potion stored within a bag would cost two actions, since it is unlikely that task could be accomplished with any less time.

Objectives

Objectives are challenges which individual players, groups of players, or entire factions can work towards over time by making checks. Each contributing check must be unique in some way (the same skill shouldn’t be used more than once per objective) and describe how it contributes to the completion of the objective.

An objective is completed upon reaching a certain number of contributing checks with a good outcome. The number of good checks required depends on the difficulty of the objective, and should be no less than two.

The first three contributing checks with a messy outcome are “close calls”. A close call gives the characters important information that helps guide them towards the successful completion of the objective.

An objective is failed upon the third contributing check with a bad outcome, or a messy outcome after the third close call.

There may be other external factors that influence objectives. One such example is time constraints, in which the objective is failed if it is not completed in time.

Traits

Traits describe a character’s nature, such as physical features, personality, culture, or even the lasting corruption of magic. Traits can be leveraged for both good and ill.

When a player makes a check, if their character has a trait that is relevant to that check, they may invoke that trait to either help or hinder theirself. That player must describe how the trait is a help or hinderance in that situation, then apply the following effects to their check, depending on how they choose to invoke it:

• If the trait was invoked to help, they gain advantage on the check.
• If the trait was invoked to hinder, they gain disadvantage on the check, but they also gain two additional experience on the skill used for the check (regardless of outcome).

Bonds

Bonds describe your character’s relationships with factions and non-player characters. You may call upon your bonds in times of need for favors and support, provided you meet their demands. Not all bonds are friendly, but all are useful.

Each bond has favor, a number representing the disposition of that bond towards your character, with positive numbers indicating friendship and negative numbers indicating hostility. Favor and any changes to it are tracked by The World.

Skills

Skills describe your character’s areas of expertise. Each skill has proficiency, a positive number representing your character’s effectiveness with that skill, and experience, a positive number representing your character’s progress towards improving that skill.

Whenever a character uses a skill as part of a check, they may gain experience depending on the result of that check. A messy outcome grants one experience to that skill, while a bad outcome grants two experience.

Once a skill has an amount of experience equal to 10 + that skill’s current proficiency, increase the proficiency of that skill by 1, and reset that skill’s experience to 0.

Learning Skills

Characters can learn new skills through practice. When a character makes a check without an appropriate skill, they may mark experience for the skill they lack according to the outcome of the check. Once that skill has 10 experience marked, the character learns that skill, increasing their proficiency to +1 and resetting that skill’s experience to 0.

Inventory

Each character can carry five items. A character can only carry one item at a time that is bulky, heavy, large, or otherwise cumbersome. Groups of small, similar items, such as five arrows or a pouch of one hundred ball bearings only count as a single item, depending on how many of them can comfortably be held in one hand.

Characters may also carry a bag capable of holding five more items. Items stored in a bag take a few moments to retrieve. The bag itself does not count as an item, but each character may only carry one.

Harm

Attacking

Actions that would cause harm are called attacks. Attacks have a method by which they inflict harm, such as a weapon, a trap, or a magic spell.

Like all challenges, no rolls are necessary for attacks if the attacker has time, tools (a weapon), and skill (to use that weapon). However, if the target of an attack is aware of it, they may spend an action to hinder that attack by dodging, blocking, etc. When they do so, the attacker is no longer considered to have time to make the attack, forcing them to make a check at best, or outright missing at worst. On a good outcome, the full weapon damage is dealt. On a messy outcome, half the weapon damage is dealt. On a bad outcome, no damage is dealt at all.

Weapons

Each weapon specifies the amount of damage it deals and any requirements for its use. Weapons may have range restrictions, measured using ranged, far, near, or intimate, take multiple actions to use, or material requirements such as fuel or ammunition.

Below is a list of some common example weapons. Not every character needs or should desire proficiency in such weapons.

Armor

Items can be utilized to protect your character from harm. Each item has three armor, which can be expended to reduce or prevent damage. When you would suffer damage, depending on the nature of the damage, you may call upon one of your items to to protect yourself. Describe how you use that item and how it helps protect your character. When you do so, you may expend some of that item’s remaining armor for the following benefits:

• Spend 1 armor to reduce the damage by half, rounded up; or,
• Spend all 3 armor to prevent the damage entirely.

Once all three of an item’s armor is spent, it is broken and needs maintenance before it can be safely used again. Maintenance varies from item to item and will take time and money to complete.

In desperate circumstances, a character may use a broken item to protect themselves. Doing so prevents the damage entirely, but destroys the item permanently.

Note that any item can be used in this way. A locket containing a photograph of a loved one may offer no protection from a dagger, but may be life-saving in the face of eldritch madness.

Conditions

Harm can take many forms, and not all of it is physical. These adverse effects are represented by conditions. Each condition has a description, such as “broken arm”, “embarrassed”, “existential crisis”, et cetera. Conditions are hand-tailored to their causes.

Each condition specifies what effects it imposes (if any) and how to end the condition. These can be temporal deadlines or specific treatments, such as “panicked until torch is relit: -1 to all checks” or “sick for six hours: inventory capacity reduced by 1”.

Wounds

The most common kind of conditions are caused by damage, and are called wounds. Wounds record the damage that caused them, and inflict a -1 penalty on checks for each point of damage.

When a character receives a wound, they must roll 1d6. If the result is less than or equal to the sum damage of that character’s wounds, they go into shock and something bad happens.

Wounds can be healed incrementally through proper care, reducing their tracked damage. Wounds are removed once their damage is reduced to 0, unless otherwise specified.

When the sum damage of a character’s wounds is more than five, they perish.

Magic

You can cast a spell if you know it. Using that spell’s name as both inspiration and thematic restriction, describe the effect you would like the spell to have. The World then responds with the potential consequences of a miscast. Knowing the consequences of failure, decide if you wish to proceed. If you do, make a check, using the spell as the skill. If the result is messy or bad, the spell is miscast.

What exactly a spell does is intentionally left up for interpretation. As long as you’re willing to accept the consequences of a miscast and The World agrees that the spell effect is appropriate according to the spell’s name, it’s entirely up to you.

Jinx

Magic is a volatile power, and casting spells can be taxing. Using this power too often can result in spells with incorrect effects, or magic that spirals out of control. Jinx represents this danger. After a character casts a spell, they receive one jinx. A character suffers a -1 penalty for each jinx they have during spellcasting checks. After resting, a character recovers from half their jinx, rounded up.

Inspiration

• 📰 Lars @ Dice Goblin — Time, Gear & Skill: A Different Approach To Skill Checks
• 📰 LootLootLore — Wastoid and the unwritten rules of rolling
• 📰 Ms. Screwhead @ Was It Likely? — give me less
• 📰 Sully5443 @ Troy Press — An Analysis of PbtA Harm Systems
• 📰 Hexed Press — Making Friends and Influencing People
• 📰 RuleOfThule @ Primeval Patterns — The Drawbacks of Conventional Skill Systems
• 📰 RuleOfThule @ Primeval Patterns — Hierarchy, Contrast, Alignment
• 📺 Matthew Colville — Skill Challenges | Running the Game
• 📺 Matthew Colville — Skill Dogpiling, Running the Game
• 📺 Ginni Di — The key to better D&D? Roll less.
• 📘 David Perry @ Lithyscaphe — Principia Apocrypha: A New Expression of Old School RPG Playstyle Principles

The following resources have not directly inspired any game mechanics or design rationale, but I think they’re neat nonetheless:

• 📰 Rowan @ The Dododecahedron — The OSR Onion
• 📰 Meguey Baker @ Lumpley Games — Ritual In Game Design
• 📰 pandatheist @ The Bone Box Chant — Revisiting the NSR
• 📰 Tim B. @ CONGAS — What is the NSR?
• 📰 Phlox @ Whose Measure God Could Not Take — A Delta Directory
• 📰 Joy of Dice @ Imagine me this! — LEVERAGE – A Tool for Social Fictional Positioning
• 📰 Valeria Loves — Promises - a Mythic Bastionland House Rule
• 📺 Dungeon Craft — Replace Hit Points! (Ep. 253)
• 📘 Yochai Gal — Cairn, Second Edition
• 📘 Chris McDowall — Into The Odd