Core Rules
This page is the rulebook for Worlds in the Dark, a Forged in the Dark game about causing problems and getting into trouble in an interstellar near-future dystopia. Some of the biggest inspirations and influences for this hack include Neon Black, Scum & Villainy, Runners in the Shadows, Starforged and Stars Without Number.
This work is based on Blades in the Dark, product of One Seven Design, developed and authored by John Harper, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Table of Contents
- Character Creation
- Character Advancement
- Assets
- Action Rolls
- Fortune Rolls
- Consequences
- Stress
- Downtime
- Progress Clocks
- The Faction Game
- Bonds and Grudges
- Running the Game
- Running NPCs
- Magnitude
Character Creation
Before you start creating your character, there are a few player principles to guide you during the character creation process. These principles aren’t supposed to constrain your creativity, but they encapsulate what this game is about. This is a sandbox game, so these touchstones are the only predefined markers that will tell you what kind of stories you’ll be exploring as you play it.
- The system is not your friend. Your characters are here because the networks of power and capital that rule society failed them, or because they couldn’t bear to live under them for another moment. At times, they may be forced to cooperate with the powers that be - but if you ever find yourself complicit with them, you’re not spacepunks any more.
- Aim to misbehave. No one ever beats the system playing by its rules, and your characters know that better than anyone. Take risks; don’t be afraid to break things; drive your character like a stolen starship.
- Be messy. Your characters are compromised, complicated individuals. They didn’t get where they are today without picking up some history and some baggage. Lean into it! Don’t always choose the safest or most efficient option; choose the one that sounds the most interesting or fun.
- Play to find out what happens. You don’t need to know everything there is to know about your character from the beginning. Start with a simple sketch, and find out who they really are through play. The details that come up at the table and the decisions you make in the moment are what will truly define your character.
1. Choose a playbook
First, choose a playbook. Your playbook tells us what kind of scoundrel your character is, but it’s just a starting point. It isn’t a “character class” or “archetype”, and it doesn’t restrict any of your choices after character creation.
Your choice of playbook determines your playbook trigger and which specialties you start out with. There are seven playbooks to choose from:
- The Expert addresses problems with education, insight or compassion. Study 2, Observe 1
- The Fixer addresses problems with charm, guile and influence. Influence 2, Charm 1
- The Hacker addresses problems with information or cyberwarfare. Hack 2, Study 1
- The Scoundrel addresses problems with agility, subterfuge and misdirection. Sneak 2, Hustle 1
- The Soldier addresses problems with force and resilience. Assault 2, Command 1
- The Technician addresses problems with technology, ingenuity and proficiency. Rig 2, Finesse 1
- The Psion addresses problems with unexpected knowledge and mysterious powers. Attune 2, Observe 1
Other than your starting specialties, your playbook trigger is the main way your playbook factors in after character creation: it’s a source of XP at the end of each session if you lean into it. For example, if your character is an Expert then they will gain XP if they address problems with education, insight or compassion.
2. Decide some details
Next, decide on a few details to flesh out your character’s backstory and motivations.
Your character’s Background is the mold that society poured them into and the life they knew before they became a spacepunk. It represents the circumstances of their birth and upbringing, and the things they did before they broke away from their old life. Did you cut all your ties, or do you still have folks out there somewhere? Make it up, pick one, or roll a die:
1d6 | Background |
1 | You grew up with spacers, more comfortable around air recyclers and bulkheads than fresh air or terrestrial horizons. Did you grow up on a station, or were you constantly on the move? |
2 | You grew up among the dispossessed - the marginalised, the forgotten or the desperate. Your childhood was a story of hardship and razor-thin margins. |
3 | You grew up on the frontier, part of a fledgling colony or struggling community. Life was hard, there was no safety net when disaster struck, and you learned harsh lessons early on. |
4 | You grew up on the fringe. You belonged to an isolated and unusual community - like a religious commune, a clan of wandering nomads, or a megacorporate enclave. |
5 | You grew up in comfort and security. Your parents were probably academics, professionals, or other members of the enfranchised class. You never felt the bite of hunger. |
6 | You grew up wealthy. You were surrounded by power and privilege, and you wanted for little. The troubles of those less fortunate than you were kept safely out of sight. |
Your character’s Moment of Truth was the inciting event: it’s the trauma that tore them from the predictable life that was laid out for them, and set them on a different path. Make it up, pick one, or roll a die:
1d6 | Moment of Truth |
1 | You angered the wrong person or stumbled across something you shouldn’t have, and your existence became an inconvenience to someone with power. |
2 | Someone you cared about fell into the cracks of the system, and they came back changed - if they came back at all. |
3 | You fell into a pit too deep to climb out of, and the only option was to run away. Are you running from your debts, or something else? |
4 | A terrible injustice occurred to you or someone you cared about, and it was covered up or just ignored by the powers that be. |
5 | Someone or something pulled the wool from your eyes and showed you how the system really works. Were you left radicalised, or just disillusioned? |
6 | You were safe and enfranchised, until you weren’t. When push came to shove, your loyal service didn’t protect you from losing everything. |
Your character’s Drive is the singular motivation that propels them forward - at least for now. It’s not the only thing they want, but it’s the thing they want more than anything else right now. Make it up, pick one, or roll a die:
1d6 | Drive |
1 | Build a legacy that will outlive you. What mark do you want to leave on the system? |
2 | Right an injustice or seek vengeance for a wrong, whether real or perceived. Why pursue this cause, and not another? |
3 | Uplift a person or a group that can’t look out for themselves. What did they do to deserve your protection? |
4 | Search for forgiveness, closure or absolution. What is it that torments you? |
5 | Look out for you and yours, and make sure that “your people” are protected. Where do you draw the line? |
6 | Keep a promise or fulfil an obligation that you made. Why is it so important to you? |
Don’t worry about getting the details perfect, or having a complete answer to every question posed above. You can amend or replace them later on if you need to, or you can leave them vague and play to find out the specifics. These three details are there to ground your character in the world and give them something to care about. However, they also factor into your character’s advancement: you receive extra XP at the end of any session where they explored their background, moment of truth, or drive.
3. Assign your specialties
Your character is defined by their specialties, which represent their specific skills and aptitudes and are each rated between 0 and 4. Your character’s specialties tell us what they’re good at or have experience with. When you need to overcome an obstacle that’s challenging or troublesome in some way, you generally use one of your specialties to do so.
There are 12 action specialties that every character has access to. These are verbs that cover a broad spectrum of actions and approaches. The action specialties are:
- Assault (Prowess): Engage in pitched combat to overcome an obstacle using martial skill, training and tactics.
- Attune (Resolve): Rely on your instincts and intuition, reach out to someone with empathy, or open your mind to the unseen world of psionics.
- Charm (Resolve): Calm a tense situation, be likeable and open, make a good first impression, win someone over or make new friends.
- Command (Resolve): Exert your will upon others with inspiring leadership, social pressure or intimidating presence.
- Finesse (Prowess): Employ precision, dexterity and grace. Pick a pocket, drive a car, line up a difficult shot.
- Hack (Insight): Create software and programs, or reach through cyberspace to make computers and networks do things they’re not supposed to do.
- Hustle (Prowess): Move quickly and with grace, and perform feats of athletics and agility. Lift, climb, jump, run or swim.
- Influence (Resolve): Convince someone with a compelling argument, lie or bluff to someone’s face, or trick them into doing what you want.
- Observe (Insight): Be perceptive and vigilant. Find a good ambush spot, notice when something’s wrong, or tell when someone’s lying to you.
- Rig (Insight): Build, fix, sabotage or modify something. Work with machinery, electronics or gadgetry of any kind.
- Sneak (Prowess): Move quietly and skilfully to avoid notice and suspicion, get close to someone without them noticing, or strike from an unseen hiding place.
- Study (Insight): Scrutinise details and interpret evidence, with time on your side. Do research, investigate leads, dig up information, figure out a complex problem.
If you want your character to be skilled in a topic, field or area of interest that isn’t covered by one of the action specialties, then you can create a custom specialty that covers it instead. Custom specialties are nouns rather than verbs, and they cover an area of competency or experience. Just like action specialties, they consist of a name and a few examples that illustrate what kind of situation they’re useful in.
Here are some examples of custom specialties:
- Anarchist Culture: Connect with local cells, spout ideology convincingly, live off the grid.
- Asteroid Miner: Navigate in subterranean spaces, operate heavy machinery, perform demolitions.
- Chemistry: Analyse mysterious substances, synthesise chemicals and acids, manufacture drugs.
- Detective Work: Follow a mark through a crowd, track down leads and clues, interrogate a suspect for the truth.
- Medicine: Deliver first aid and medical care, perform surgery, do medical research and come up with diagnoses.
- Piloting: Fly a starship or other vehicle, pilot a drone, plot the fastest or safest course across a system.
- Therapy: Get to the bottom of someone’s problems, talk someone down, console someone in a crisis.
The playbook you chose for you character gave you a few pre-assigned specialties already. Now you can assign 4 more points (or “dots” on the character sheet):
- Put one dot in any action or custom specialty that reflects your character’s background.
- Put one dot in any action or custom specialty that reflects your character’s moment of truth.
- Put the remaining two dots anywhere you please.
When assigning your specialties, keep in mind that no specialty can be increased above rating 2 at the start of the game.
4. Determine your attributes
Your character also has three attributes, which are used when resisting consequences: the three attributes are Insight, Prowess and Resolve.
The rating of each attribute is determined by the number of different specialties you have that are linked to it (on the character sheet, it’s the first “column” of dots). For example, if you have two specialties linked to Insight, then your Insight rating is 2. The more well-rounded your character is, the better their attributes will be. Like specialties, each attribute caps out at a max rating of 4 and can’t ever be increased above that.
Each of the action specialties given above is already linked to one of the three attributes. If you create a custom specialty for your character, you should also decide which attribute it is linked to:
- Insight: Use for specialties related to cleverness, knowledge and understanding.
- Prowess: Use for specialties related to strength, athletics, dexterity or coordination.
- Resolve: Use for specialties related to willpower, force of personality and charisma.
The attribute linked to each specialty is descriptive, not prescriptive. If you decide that your “Medicine” specialty is linked to Insight, that doesn’t mean you can’t use it to perform surgery (which requires manual skill and coordination). It just means that Insight is the best fit for the training and education you’d expect someone with a medical background to have. In short, just choose what feels right - and if there are two attributes that seem equally correct, just choose the one you like most for your character.
5. Pick a talent
Talents are special abilities that allow your character to break the rules in various ways. They are divided up into the same playbooks you chose when assigning your specialties. Your playbook is a good place to find talents that work well with your character’s theme, but these categories are just a guideline. You’re not restricted to talents from one playbook, either during character creation or later on when you advance by spending XP.
During character creation, you pick one talent to start with. Talents can have a wide variety of effects, such as: giving you fictional permission to do something that might otherwise be difficult or impossible, giving you some kind of mechanical bonus in a specific circumstance, or allowing you to spend stress or use your trump card to activate some special effect.
Your trump card is a special resource that every character has; it is used by certain talents. If you have purchased one of those talents, you can use your trump card in order to activate the talent and receive its benefits. Once your trump card has been used, it usually doesn’t come back until your next downtime phase. If you don’t have any talents that use your trump card, then you can ignore it.
Advanced talents are additional special abilities that cannot be taken until you meet some specific requirement. For example, you may be required to learn the secrets of a certain mystic order before you are able to unlock certain types of psionic discipline. These requirements must be met in play before the corresponding advanced talents become available.
6. Pick starting assets
The final step is to decide which assets your character has when the game begins. These are their most significant possessions; you don’t need to write down every trinket or article of clothing they have, just the important stuff.
Here’s a list of items that any well-prepared and well-equipped spacefaring scoundrel will have access to:
- A vaccsuit with magboots
- Fancy clothes, protective gear or combat armor
- A pistol, an electroshock pistol or a machine pistol
- A shotgun, a hunting rifle or an assault rifle
- An easily-concealed blade, a stun baton or a set of brass knuckles
- Smoke grenades, armor-piercing ammo or plastic explosives
- A medkit, a mechanic’s toolkit, a set of lockpicks, or a hacking suite
- A handheld sensor suite, medical scanner or a pair of high-powered binoculars
- A databank, a software package, a zero-day exploit or a pair of smart glasses
- A basic drone with one tag
- A stash of fine alcohol, fine recreational drugs or one type of performance drug
Of course, you’re not a well-prepared and well-equipped spacefaring adventurer; you’re a spacepunk living on the brink, and you never have everything you need to rest easy. So pick just five of the items from the list above and mark them on your playbook sheet. Each entry on the list can only be picked once - for example, if you picked a medkit, you can’t also pick a hacking suite.
Your character also begins with game with 2 Cash, so mark that on your sheet as well.
Character Advancement
Each player keeps track of the experience points (XP) that their character earns, and they accumulate XP from the following sources:
- When you attempt a desperate action, gain 1 XP immediately.
- When the session ends, gain 1 XP if you fulfiled your playbook trigger. Gain 2 XP if it happened a lot.
- When the session ends, gain 1 XP if you explored your background, moment of truth or your current drive. Gain 2 XP if it happened a lot.
- When the session ends, gain 1 XP if you struggled because of your hindrances. Gain 2 XP if it happened a lot.
When you allocate this end-of-session XP for your character, you get to decide how much XP to award for each category. XP is not “given out” by the GM or other players, although it’s totally fine for other players to advocate for you and remind you about stuff your character did that you might have forgotten about. At the end of the day, though, it’s your call.
Spending XP
When you accumulate enough XP, you can spend it to advance your character in four ways:
Buy a specialty. For 6 XP, you can add a dot to any action or custom specialty (including a brand new one), up to a maximum rating of 3.
Buy a talent. For 8 XP, you can select a new talent for your character from any playbook. If you qualify for an advanced talent, you can select one of those.
Master a specialty. For 10 XP, you can achieve mastery in a specialty and increase its rating from 3 to 4. Choose carefully, though; you can only ever master one specialty.
You can only spend XP between sessions, or during downtime.
Assets
Assets are the equipment and resources that your character can draw upon. Your character is assumed to have the basic possessions they need to get by in their daily life, including things like a personal datapad. You only need to write down your most important and significant items as assets. You can find a selection of available assets here.
As well as assets, your character also has Cash. Cash is an abstract measure of your wealth tracked in simple units. Just like their assets, Cash is separate from your character’s petty funds and basic expenses - it represents extra savings and the proceeds of their exploits. Trivial purchases or basic upkeep don’t normally cost any Cash.
Here’s some general examples of how much Cash is worth:
- 0 Cash. A small, easily affordable purchase. A cup of coffee, a train ticket, a small bribe. Any quality 0 asset.
- 2 Cash. A costly purchase for someone who is struggling to get by. A payout for a trivial job. An expensive piece of specialist equipment.
- 4 Cash. A costly purchase for someone who is comfortable. A payout for a small job. An advanced drone.
- 6 Cash. A costly purchase for someone who is fairly affluent. A payout for a standard job. A gravcar.
- 8 Cash. A costly purchase for someone who is wealthy. A payout for a serious job. An aerocar.
- 10+ Cash. A costly purchase even for someone who lives a life of luxury. A payout for an impressive job. A small personal shuttle.
The value of assets and special equipment are measured by their quality rating, which is equivalent to their Cash value.
Tags
Assets generally have fictional properties rather than mechanical ones. If you have a pistol, you can attack different enemies than if you are using a knife or your bare fists - and this will be reflected in the position and effect of your actions. Most assets only have fictional properties; some, like armor, also have their own special rules.
Some assets have tags to help define their fictional properties; tags are short descriptive words or phrases that tell you something about the asset’s constraints or capabilities. For example, pretty much any asset can have the fine or cheap tags. Fine assets are more expensive, but also more robust, have extra features, or are just plain better. Cheap assets are old and shoddy, more likely to break or malfunction at the worst time, or just don’t perform well.
Load
You don’t have to tell the GM exactly which assets your character is carrying on them at any given time. Instead, you just decide what load your character is carrying:
- Light (1-3): You are unencumbered and inconspicuous, and blend in with ordinary people. You won’t raise any eyebrows at a social gathering.
- Normal (4-5): You look prepared and/or armed, like a mercenary or an explorer. You stand out from civilians, and might have a hard time getting into some places.
- Heavy (6): You look like you’re on a mission, and you’ve brought everything you might need. You stand out like a sore thumb, and you’re a little slow and unwieldy.
- Encumbered (7-9): You’re overburdened and can’t do anything except move very slowly, unless you have something like power armor to ease the burden.
Whenever you want to use one of your assets, you use up some load to have it with you - usually 1 point, but sometimes 2 or 3 if it’s heavy or bulky. Some assets cost 0 load, meaning you can have them on you for “free”. Once you’ve marked an asset off, you have it on your person until something happens to deprive you of it. Load resets whenever you get a chance to access your equipment and resupply.
If you pick something up during an adventure, you don’t have to mark load for it. It might slow you down if it’s heavy, but that’s not the same as having “heavy load”. Even if you use a flashback to hide one of your own items somewhere and pick it up later, you don’t have to mark load. Load is mostly about how visibly prepared and/or armed you are, and you only have to mark load for the stuff you brought with you.
Consumables
Some assets are consumable or have a consumable element - for example, ammunition, medicine or grenades. You don’t have to keep track of your stock for these items - during their downtime, it’s assumed that your character will replenish ammunition and medicines, buy new grenades or power cells, and so on. You only have to worry about them if renewing the asset becomes a problem - for example, if the party is on an extended expedition far from civilisation, or if your character doesn’t have the contacts to just buy grenades whenever they want.
In that case, the GM might decide that you only have temporary access to the asset. If you pick up a few grenades from an enemy, then you have them until you use them for something, but when they’re gone they’re gone. Alternatively, the GM might create a progress clock to represent your dwindling supplies - for example, “No More Drugs” or “Out of Supplies”. Every time you use the asset, tick 1 segment. If the progress clock fills up before you are able to resolve the shortage, you lose access to the assets affected by it.
You can also use this rule when you’re buying something consumable. If you don’t have the Cash for a box of grenades, then maybe you can get a handful of grenades for a discount. Instead of being cheap and inferior, they work just fine but are single use - once they’re gone, they’re gone.
Augments
Augments are a special kind of asset; like ordinary assets, they have a description and may have some tags that define their capabilities. They tend to be more expensive than the equivalent assets, but are part of your body and are always with you. You never need to spend load to gain the benefits of an augment (although the flipside is that you can never choose to not have them with you).
Getting an augment comes in two steps: first you have to obtain the actual implant, and then you need to get it surgically installed. The quality rating of your doctor is what matters when you go under the knife to get chromed. To safely install an augment, you’ll need a quality 1 doctor for a basic augment; a quality 2 doctor for a military-grade augment; and a quality 3 doctor for an illegal augment. Hiring a doctor works like hiring any other expert (see the cohort rules below).
Getting a new augment surgically implanted inflicts an injury that must be recovered from normally. If you can’t afford a doctor with enough quality to install your implant correctly, or if there are none to be found, then your implant is installed with a drawback from this list:
- Glitchy: The cyberware functions just fine most of the time, but sometimes it behaves unpredictably or stops working at the worst moment.
- Volatile: The cyberware functions just fine most of the time, but is dangerous or hard to control when damaged or pushed too far.
- Conspicuous: You are clearly and visibly augmented, and it’s difficult to hide your implants and what they do.
- Complications: The surgery is a messy one, and you suffer a serious injury rather than a regular one.
Repairing or replacing an existing augment is less risky and expensive than getting a new one. Unless the augment is fully internal or otherwise inaccessible, it usually doesn’t require surgery or risk drawbacks.
Cohorts
A cohort is a special kind of asset; you usually don’t own a cohort, but you may be able to hire one for a while. There are two kinds of cohorts you can hire.
If you hire an expert, you acquire the services of a skilled NPC for a time. Different types of expert will have their own areas of expertise - for example, they might be a scientist, pilot, bounty hunter or infiltrator. They roll their quality when you direct them to do something or their quality is tested in some way. Experts are always individual people, so their scale is 0.
Instead of hiring a single expert, you can instead hire a gang of people. Gangs also have a type - such as mercenaries, smugglers, spies or researchers. The quality of a gang is one step lower than an expert of the same price, so you could get a quality 2 gang for the same price as a quality 3 expert. The gang’s quality represents the gang as a whole, not each individual member. Gangs also have scale equal to their quality - for example, a quality 2 gang would be comprised of at least a dozen people.
Hiring a cohort for a short period is the same as purchasing any other asset. If you wanted to hire a quality 3 expert or a quality 2 gang for a job, you would pay them 3 Cash. You might also obtain the services of a cohort if you convince an NPC or a group of them to help you with something. Getting a cohort on a more permanent basis may require you pay them a regular retainer, or complete some kind of project or mission to secure their loyalty and convince them to join you.
Action Rolls
When your character does something challenging, make an action roll to see how it turns out. We don’t make an action roll unless the PC is put to the test, and there are interesting consequences that may ensue and move the fiction forward. To make an action roll, we go through six steps. In play, they flow together somewhat, but let’s break each one down here for clarity.
1. State your goal. To start with, the player should describe the goal they’re hoping to achieve. The GM then decides whether an action roll is needed - is there an obstacle that’s dangerous or troublesome in some way? If the outcome is uncertain but there is no danger, a fortune roll might be better. If it’s something we’d expect them to simply accomplish based on their background or skills, we don’t make a roll at all - it simply happens.
2. Introduce the threat. The GM introduces the threat that stands between the player character and their goal. This is also the GM’s opportunity to telegraph to the player what the potential consequences of the action might be. It doesn’t have to be perfect information, of course, but the GM should almost always telegraph trouble before it strikes.
3. Choose an approach. The player tells the GM how they plan to approach the threat, which determines which specialty they will need to roll. As long as the table agrees that it makes sense for a specialty to apply to the action you’re attempting, then you can use it. A specialty that’s a bad fit for an action might be more risky, however, or have less impact.
4. Set position and effect. Once the player has decided on their approach, the GM sets the position and effect. That tells the player how risky the action will be, as well as how impactful it will be if it succeeds. Once they know the stakes, the player can decide if they still want to stick with this approach.
5. Add bonus dice. Finally, the player decides whether they want to spend any resources to improve their chances. You can spend 2 stress to push yourself for +1d or increased effect, and you can also get +1d if an ally spends 1 stress to assist you.
6. Roll the dice. The player rolls a number of dice equal to their rating in whatever specialty they’re using, plus any bonus dice they added. When the dice have been rolled, we judge the results.
If you have zero dots in the specialty in question, you can still make an untrained roll with 1d. However, an untrained roll can never result in a full success, even if you roll a 6. The best result you can get with an untrained roll is a partial success, even if you push or receive assistance for bonus dice.
Judging Results
What happens next depends on the highest number that displays on the resulting dice:
- 1-3. Failure. You don’t achieve your goal, and you suffer consequences.
- 4-5. Partial success. You achieve your goal, but you suffer consequences.
- 6. Full success. You achieve your goal, and suffer no consequences.
- 66. Critical success. You achieve your goal, and get increased effect or some other benefit.
The player’s roll pulls double-duty to resolve the action of the character, as well as any NPCs that are involved. It determines how those actions interact and which consequences result. You’re not just rolling to see how effective your character is at overcoming the threat. You’re also rolling to see how the threat manifests, and what effect it has on your character.
Position
Position determines just how dire the consequences of an action will be if they manifest. There are three options:
- Controlled position. You have an ace up your sleeve or some significant edge on your opposition. You can act on your own terms, with only minor consequences at stake.
- Risky position. You’re going head-to-head with the threat, acting under fire, taking a chance and risking significant consequences.
- Desperate position. You are overreaching your capabilities, putting yourself in harm’s way, and you might be risking serious consequences.
To choose a position, the GM picks the one that most closely matches the situation at hand. By default, an action roll is risky. If the situation seems more dangerous, make it desperate. If it seems less dangerous, make it controlled.
It’s important to remember that position is relative; it depends on the character and the situation! If you’re in your element, a roll might be controlled for you when the exact same action would be risky for someone else. Don’t be afraid to take the character’s background and specialties into account when setting position.
To illustrate position, let’s say the player is trying to Hustle through a group of enemies. If they haven’t seen you at all and you can blindside them, it’s controlled. If they’ve seen you, but you have a headstart and plenty of terrain to lose them in, it’s risky. If they’re chasing you over an open field and there’s nowhere to hide, it’s desperate.
Hesitating: If your position is controlled, you are fairly safe and have the option to pull out if things go badly. If you get a failure or partial success on a controlled action, then you get to decide whether to accept a minor consequence (such as worse position) or to withdraw and try a different approach.
Effect
Effect determines how much of an impact your action can have and how close to your stated goal it gets you, if it’s successful. Once again, there are three options:
- Great effect. You achieve more than usual, having a greater impact or making more progress. What additional benefit do you enjoy?
- Standard effect. You achieve what you expected, either overcoming the obstacle or making significant progress towards it. Is that enough, or is there more to do?
- Limited effect. You achieve a partial or weak effect. How is your impact diminished? What effort remains to achieve your goal?
The GM should go with their gut when setting the initial effect. Then consider a few factors that may adjust it up or down:
- Potency: Do you have some advantage to help overcome the threat, or some disadvantage that makes overcoming it harder?
- Quality: How effective are your tools, weapons or other resources, compared to the threat? Roughly equal, or does one side have an edge?
- Scale: Are you trying to take on more opponents, cover a larger area, perform an action with a bigger scope of influence? This could be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on context.
After taking these additional factors into consideration, the effect of an action could be reduced below limited to zero effect or pushed beyond great into extreme effect. If one factor overshadows the others, then the dominant factor is what determines the effect. If you’re trying to take on dozens of enemies, it doesn’t matter if you have a fine weapon. You’re still likely to have limited or even zero effect due to scale.
Trading position: If it makes sense to do so, the GM can allow players to trade position for effect before they make their roll. By taking a greater risk and overextending yourself, you can push your luck and try to get a better result. For example, a controlled/limited action could be traded off into a risky/standard action if the player character is willing to expose themselves to a greater risk.
Defensive Actions
As the name implies, action rolls are usually active, not passive. If someone has a gun trained on you, getting shot is a potential consequence of whatever goal you’re trying to accomplish - such as disarming your opponent, getting safely into cover, or keeping them busy while your allies get away. We take it as a given that you’d like to avoid being shot, if possible. If your goal is just to not get shot, then what’s the difference between failure and a consequence? What does it mean if you roll a partial success?
When this is the case, it’s usually a sign that you should rethink the action and restate your goal. If you’ve thought about it and you’re absolutely sure you need to make a purely defensive roll, it should probably be a fortune roll to see how much of the danger you’re able to avoid. Regardless of the outcome of the roll, the fiction should always advance afterwards.
Teamwork
When the party works together, the player characters have access to four special teamwork maneuvers.
Protecting allies. If one or more of your allies is about to suffer consequences and it makes sense in the fiction for you to protect them, you can always intervene and suffer the consequences instead of them. You can even resist a consequence that you took on behalf of someone else.
Assisting allies. If it makes sense in the fiction, you can always assist an ally with their action by spending 1 stress. You don’t have to roll any dice yourself, but the ally you assisted gets +1d on their roll. You risk getting drawn into the consequences, depending on the nature of your assistance.
Setup action. Instead of spending stress, you can make your own action roll to indirectly help with a threat or obstacle - for example, distracting the guards so that another character can ambush them. A setup action is a normal action roll; any member of the party who follows through gets increased effect or improved position for their roll. Multiple follow-up actions might be able to take advantage of your setup, as long as it makes sense in the fiction.
Group action. If an action would benefit from multiple characters working together and combining their efforts, you can perform a group action. This allows one character to take the lead and coordinate the party through the task. Everyone involved makes an action roll, and the single best result is used as the overall effort for everyone who rolled. However, the character leading the group action takes 1 stress for each character who rolled a failure. This represents the strain of coordinating and covering for the party.
Fortune Rolls
When the GM isn’t sure of the answer to a question and it isn’t something that should be handled by an action roll, they can make a fortune roll to disclaim decision making and determine the answer. A fortune roll basically tells you “how much” something manifests, without taking position or effect into consideration. You should make a fortune roll when you need to determine the outcome of something the player characters aren’t involved in or when luck is the dominant factor. The players can also make fortune rolls when the outcome is uncertain, but an action roll is not appropriate because there is no danger or trouble at hand (or when failure is the only risk).
Examples might include:
- The player characters are caught in the middle of a conflict between two powerful factions, and you need to know who has the upper hand.
- The player characters have sent a cohort of NPCs to help them sabotage a corporate space station, and you need to see how well it goes.
- A strange illness is sweeping through an isolated frontier settlement, and you need to know how rapidly it’s progressing.
- Law enforcement have caught wind of the player characters and opened an investigation, and you need to know how quickly they can gather evidence.
- A player character makes a successful action roll to do something, but whether it works out according to plan comes down to luck.
- A player character is working on a long-term project with a progress clock, and they make a fortune roll to see how many ticks they fill in.
In short: if there’s something uncertain that isn’t covered by a rule, the GM can call for a fortune roll instead of simply deciding the outcome.
If any kind of trait or rating is applicable to the roll - such as a character’s specialty or attribute rating, the quality rating of a cohort, the Tier of a faction, or a starship’s quality - then you can use that to build a dice pool. If no rating applies, you can start from 1d for sheer dumb luck. Then add +1d for every major advantage and -1d for every major disadvantage that applies.
The results are as follows:
- 1-3. Poor outcome or little impact.
- 4-5. Mixed outcome or partial impact.
- 6. Significant outcome or full impact.
- 66. Exceptional outcome or extraordinary impact.
Effect Levels
The fortune roll is an abstract mechanic that’s meant to be interpreted by the GM. Exactly what “full impact” means in each situation depends on context, and it’s totally fine to decide for yourself how to interpret it. If you do need to determine the corresponding effect of a fortune roll, ask yourself if you were rolling for whether or not or how much.
If the outcome of the roll is truly uncertain and you were rolling for whether or not it manifests at all, then “full impact” is equivalent to standard effect. “Partial impact” is equivalent to limited effect, and so on. An outright failure means the thing you’re rolling for didn’t manifest at all, or that it didn’t make any real difference. If the outcome is extremely unlikely, then even “full impact” might only be equivalent to limited effect.
If the outcome is fairly certain but you’re rolling to determine how much it manifests or you accomplish,then “full impact” is equivalent to great effect. “Partial impact” is equivalent to standard effect, and so on. In that context, even an outright failure just means that you accomplished disappointingly little, rather than nothing at all. This is the kind of fortune roll you usually use when working on a long-term project, filling a recovery clock or gathering information.
Engagement Rolls
When the player characters encounter an uncertain situation, the GM is responsible for describing the first threat they encounter and the starting situation they find themselves in. Instead of simply deciding these details, the GM can make an engagement roll to disclaim decision making and determine how simple or troublesome the situation is. You can think of an engagement roll as a way to transition between scenes; whenever you need to “cut to the action” or transition into a more tense scenario, you can use an engagement roll to determine how dire the situation is when the scene opens.
You might make an engagement roll:
- If the party is executing a plan or beginning a mission, and you need to determine how much trouble they’re in when they encounter the first threat.
- If there’s a carefully concealed trap or ambush ahead of the party, and you need to know how much danger they’re in by the time they notice it.
- If the party is being stalked by a predator or assassin, and you need to know how close it gets before they realise what’s happening.
An engagement roll is a standard fortune roll, starting with 1d for sheer luck. As usual, adjust this by giving +1d for every major advantage, and -1d for every major disadvantage. If you’re rolling to execute a plan, for example, you might consider:
- Is the plan particularly bold and daring? Is it overly complex and contingent on many factors?
- Does the plan expose a vulnerability or hit the target where they’re weakest? Or is the target especially resilient to this approach?
- Do you have friends or contacts to provide aid or insight? Do you have rivals or enemies who are interfering with you?
- Is there anything else which makes this plan more or less risky?
The outcome of the engagement roll determines the position their characters are in when the threat manifests, or when they encounter their first obstacle:
- 1-3. You’re in a desperate position when the action starts.
- 4-5. You’re in a risky position when the action starts.
- 6. You’re in a controlled position when the action starts.
- 66. You’re in a controlled position, and you get some extra advantage or stroke of luck. You might have already overcome the first threat.
For example: The party is being pursued by a stealthy predator in an alien jungle. They have been warned of danger and are wary for an ambush (+1d), and they also have a handheld sensor to help detect lifeforms (+1d). However, they have been walking for 8 hours and are exhausted (-1d). The GM decides to make an engagement roll with 2d to see how much trouble they’re in when it decides to strike. On a roll of a 4, it puts them in a risky position. The creature surprises them, but they have time to react before it comes crashing into the party.
Consequences
Enemy actions, bad circumstances, or the outcome of a roll can inflict consequences on a PC. A given circumstance might result in one or more consequences, depending on the situation. The GM determines the consequences, following from the fiction and the style and tone established by the game group.
If the action was in a controlled position, you might choose a minor consequence:
- Withdraw: When the position is controlled, the player can always choose to withdraw and try a different approach instead of suffering a consequence.
- Worse position: On a failure, the position the player character finds themselves in might be worsened from controlled to risky.
- Reduced effect: On a partial success, the effect of the action might be reduced by one level, to a minimum of limited effect.
- Complication: A minor or narrative complication of some kind might emerge. For example, something might break or the player characters may attract unwanted attention.
- Progress clock: The GM might create a new progress clock for an impending threat and mark 1 tick on it, or mark 1 tick on an existing clock.
- Condition: The player character might suffer some minor injury or affliction that gives them a condition, such as Angry or Exhausted.
If the action was in a risky position, you might choose a significant consequence:
- Lost opportunity: On a failure, the situation might change and cause the player character’s opportunity to slip away. They must try a new approach, such as a different action or change of circumstances.
- Worse position: On a failure, the position the player character finds themselves in might be worsened from risky to desperate.
- Reduced effect: On a partial success, the effect of the action might be reduced by up to two levels, to a minimum of limited effect.
- Complication: A significant complication of some kind might emerge. For example, the room might catch fire or reinforcements might join the enemy side.
- Progress clock: The GM might create a new progress clock for an impending threat and mark 2 ticks on it, or mark 2 ticks on an existing clock.
- Injury: The player character might suffer some significant injury, such as a gunshot wound or a slashed leg.
If the action was in a desperate position, you might choose a serious consequence:
- Complication: A severe complication of some kind might emerge. For example, the entire building might collapse or the target might disappear from sight.
- Progress clock: The GM might create a new progress clock for an impending threat and mark 3 ticks on it, or mark 3 ticks on an existing clock.
- Serious injury: The player character might suffer a debilitating injury that renders them incapacitated and unable to act without assistance.
- Death’s door: If the situation is truly catastrophic, the player character might bypass a serious injury and be placed into mortal peril directly.
You can mix and match these consequences to fit the situation, lessen the blow or shake things up. A significant consequence is equivalent to two minor consequences; a serious consequence is equal to three. For example, instead of inflicting an injury for a risky action, the GM might inflict two consequences: a condition and a minor complication. Both of them are individually less serious than a single significant consequence, but they must be resisted separately.
Conditions and Injury
One of the possible consequences that can arise from an action is to suffer a condition or an injury, depending on the position of the action. Conditions and injuries can give you a dice penalty on certain kinds of action or fortune roll. This penalty does not stack, even if you have multiple conditions or injuries that apply to an action. If the dice penalty brings you down to 0d, then roll two dice and keep the worst result.
Conditions are minor afflictions that are more psychological than physical, and are relatively easy to shake off. When you mark a condition, you roll with -1d on a certain type of action until you clear it. Sometimes you get to choose whichever condition you feel is most appropriate; other times the GM will tell you which condition to mark.
The 5 conditions are:
- Angry. You roll with -1d whenever you face challenges that need subtlety or a light touch.
- Insecure. You roll with -1d whenever you face challenges that require charm or social graces.
- Shaken. You roll with -1d whenever you face challenges that require courage or resolve.
- Distracted. You roll with -1d whenever you face challenges that require concentration or mental exertion.
- Exhausted. You roll with -1d whenever you face challenges that require physical exertion.
If you’re told to mark a condition you already have, then mark a different one instead. You can mark up to two conditions; after that, any new conditions become injuries.
Injuries represent physical harm, and are harder to clear than conditions. When you are told to mark an injury, make a note of the specific injury you suffered - such as “slashed leg”, “concussion”, or “gunshot wound”. You roll with -1d on all action and fortune rolls until the injury is cured. You can mark up to two injuries; after that, any new injuries become serious injuries.
Serious injuries represent bodily harm which is severe enough to leave you incapacitated. You’re not completely helpless, but you can’t do anything that would require an action roll unless you push yourself or get an ally to assist you. You don’t receive the usual benefits of pushing or assistance. You can only mark one serious injury at a time; instead of marking a second, you are pushed to death’s door.
Death’s door is as bad as it gets. You are in critical condition and need serious medical attention right away; if you don’t get it, you’ll die. First aid can prolong your life for a while, but not indefinitely. You’ll need a hospital or somewhere with proper medical equipment to save your life. If you survive the ordeal, clear death’s door and mark a serious injury if you haven’t already. There may also be permanent consequences, depending on the actions that were taken to save you.
First Aid
Emergency medical attention and/or the judicious use of pharmaceuticals won’t heal injuries, but they can keep someone going for a while. If you receive appropriate first aid, you get one of the following benefits:
- If you have a condition or injury, you can ignore the dice penalty for a while.
- If you have a serious injury, you can act without assistance for a while.
- If you’re on death’s door, it will prolong your life for a while.
Giving first aid is usually an action roll in a dangerous situation, or a fortune roll otherwise. How long it lasts depends on the effectiveness of the action or fortune roll: it might last about ten minutes (limited), about an hour (standard), or several hours (great).
Resistance
Whenever your character suffers any consequence that you don’t like - including a condition or injury - you can choose to resist it. Resistance is automatically effective, but is not without cost. When you resist a consequence, the GM will tell you which attribute you should use for the resistance roll:
- Insight: Consequences that arise from being deceived, failing to notice something, or failing to understand the situation.
- Prowess: Consequences that arise from being hurt, overexerting yourself physically, or not being strong or fast enough.
- Resolve: Consequences that arise from being placed under mental or emotional strain, or from hesitating, faltering or doubting yourself.
When you resist a consequence, you suffer stress equal to the lowest die result on the resistance roll. If your lowest roll was a 2, for example, you suffer 2 stress. If you have 0 rating in the attribute, then roll 2 dice and take whichever result is higher. You can only roll to resist each consequence once.
Usually, a resistance roll reduces the severity of a consequence. If you’re going to suffer a serious injury, for example, a resistance roll would reduce it to an injury. The GM also has the option to rule that your character completely avoids the consequence. Which consequences can be avoided and which can merely be mitigated is a way for the GM to decide how gritty the game is.
Resisting a consequence changes how much of the danger manifests or how bad it is, but it doesn’t negate the fictional outcome of the action roll. If the consequence was getting shot, for example, then resistance means you avoided the bullet, blocked it somehow, or maybe you found some cover… but it doesn’t mean the bullet was never fired. An action roll should always move the fiction forward, and you should never roll twice for the exact same thing. If your action roll results in you falling off the roof and suffering an injury, the injury is a consequence and you can resist that. But even if you resist it, you have still fallen off the roof and you have to deal with that - your fictional situation has changed.
Stress
Stress is an abstract resource that represents your character’s reserves of fortitude, skill and luck, but also represents the prep and legwork they do in their downtime - gathering equipment, doing research, recruiting friends, and so on. There are a few ways for characters to spend stress:
- Teamwork. Gain 1 stress to assist a teammate with their action and give them +1d towards it, or gain variable stress to lead a group action.
- Push Yourself. Gain 2 stress to push yourself for increased effect or +1d to an action roll, fortune roll, or any other kind of roll where extra effort might help you.
- Resist Consequences. You can gain stress to mitigate or negate a consequence, using the rules for resistance.
- Flashback. You can gain stress to narrate a flashback to an earlier point in time which explains how you prepared for this moment - paying off a side character, having hidden a weapon somewhere, etc. It can cost anywhere from 0 stress (for a trivial detail) to 2 or even 3 stress (for a complex, elaborate action).
Once you accumulate 9 points of stress, you reach your breaking point and become overwhelmed. Choose whichever of the following you think is most appropriate for your character in this moment:
- Fight. You go berserk, lashing out at any perceived threat or obstacle without regard for your personal safety. You’ll keep fighting until the threat has been overcome, or until something or someone physically restrains or incapacitates you.
- Flight. You panic and attempt to escape as quickly as you can. If it’s a dangerous situation, you flee without regard for anything but saving your own skin. If the stakes are lower, you do whatever you can to disengage and remove yourself from the situation. If getting away is impossible, you freeze up instead. You only stop panicking once the threat is far away.
- Freeze. You shut down in place, freezing up like a deer in the headlights. You’ll stay that way until the threat has passed, or until you suffer some consequence or harm that snaps you out of it. Alternatively, you might be knocked out, left for dead, or otherwise taken out of the action.
- Fall. You go out in a blaze of glory. Your character dies or is forced into retirement, but not before managing one last feat of dramatic defiance. It might be a heroic final stand to buy your allies time, one last desperate push that overcomes the obstacle, or a decisive final blow against the enemy. You don’t have to roll for it, but you and the GM decide together exactly what happens.
While you’re overwhelmed, you can still make rolls as usual if it makes sense to do so - for example, rolling to attack someone or to get away from a threat. However, you can’t spend any stress until you snap out of it (not even to resist consequences). When you’re done being overwhelmed, you reset your stress all the way back down to zero.
Being overwhelmed has more repercussions than just freaking out in the moment. At the end of the session, you’ll either gain a new and permanent hindrance (if you had less than four), or one of your existing hindrances transforms into something more severe. This represents new trauma acquired from the stress and pressure your character has been through, and the players and GM should decide together what it should be.
Hindrances
When your character becomes overwhelmed, they can get a new hindrance or worsen an existing one. Hindrances are permanent problems that can cause trouble for your character or make their life tougher. They might be character flaws, unbreakable principles or personality quirks. Even as your character becomes more competent and skilled over time, they will accrue hindrances as the trauma and strain of their perilous lives takes its toll and makes it harder for them to function.
You don’t pick hindrances from a list; they’re made up based on whatever seems appropriate. The only rule is that they are troublesome and that they’re inherent to your character. Being in debt, being wanted, or having a bad reputation are not good hindrances because they are part of the external world, not your character.
Here are some example hindrances:
- Addicted: You’re in the grip of something like drugs, drink or religion; you can’t get by without it.
- Cold: You’re not easily moved by emotional appeals or social bonds.
- Obsessed: You’re totally enthralled by some activity, person, or ideology; you can’t leave it alone.
- Paranoid: You imagine danger everywhere; you can’t trust others.
- Principled: You are burdened by some principle or code that you cannot bear to break.
- Reckless: You have little regard for your own safety or best interests.
- Soft: You are losing your edge and becoming sentimental, passive, gentle.
- Unstable: Your emotional state is volatile. You can instantly rage, or fall into despair, act impulsively, or freeze up.
You can play up your character’s hindrances as much or as little as you like. They can totally transform the way your character acts and thinks, or they can have a smaller impact if you prefer. If you do play into them and let them cause trouble, though, you get extra XP for it. You can never have more than four hindrances; instead of gaining a fifth, one of the hindrances you already have transforms into something more extreme and troublesome.
Downtime
When your characters complete a mission or adventure and get a chance to rest, time zooms out a bit and the downtime phase begins. During downtime, a few things happen in a specific order:
- The GM presents any escalations that occur - advancing progress clocks, allowing factions to act, and introducing entanglements.
- The players clear any conditions (such as Angry or Exhausted) from their character sheets, and reset their trump card if they used it.
- The players get a chance to make downtime actions to clear stress, recover from injuries, or work on long-term projects.
- The players enter “free play” - they can talk to each other, go places, do things, and make rolls as needed until it’s time for their next adventure.
Escalations
The players get to make special actions during the downtime phase. The GM gets to make some special actions of their own, which are called escalations. As the name implies, they represent things escalating in the background while the player characters rest - NPCs and factions make their moves, pursue their agendas, and advance the fiction.
There are three escalations for the GM to use during downtime:
- Introduce an entanglement that manifests to complicate the lives of your characters. It might occur immediately, or it might interrupt downtime.
- Tick one or more progress clocks to reflect ongoing events that are developing in the background, like faction agendas or looming threats.
- Have one or more factions execute a maneuver, making a move to achieve some short-term goal which isn’t significant enough to be represented by a progress clock.
The GM doesn’t have to perform all of these escalations every downtime phase; they can pick whichever options seem appropriate for the current situation. They should always pick at least one, though. The world doesn’t stand still while your characters are out of the fray.
Downtime Actions
Most of the stuff your characters might want to do in the downtime phase - like talking to each other, talking to a contact, gathering information, purchasing items, and so on - can be handled in free play. Your characters can do as much of those things as they want, within reason. There are also certain special actions they can take during the downtime phase, which are called downtime actions. During the downtime phase, each character has time for two downtime actions.
Cut loose. Narrate how your character chooses to relax or blow off steam, and skip past the events or roleplay them out. Then, clear stress by rolling whichever attribute seems most appropriate:
- Roll Insight if you cut loose by spending time in solitary contemplation, or dedicated yourself to intellectual pursuits.
- Roll Prowess if you cut loose by focusing on your body: either by training and honing it, or allowing it to rest and recuperate.
- Roll Resolve if you cut loose by indulging your vices and appetites, socialising, or expressing yourself.
This roll works like resistance in reverse - whatever number appears on the highest die, reduce your stress by that number. For example, if you roll a 4 then you would clear 4 points of stress.
Recover. Spend time resting and recovering from an injury or a serious injury. To recover from harm, you must fill a recovery clock with 4 segments for an injury, or 6 for a serious injury. Taking this downtime action fills in 1 segment. If another player character or an NPC is available to give you medical attention, they can make a fortune roll to fill in additional segments (this doesn’t use up a downtime action for them). If you have multiple recovery clocks to fill, then ticks can “roll over” into the next clock.
Work on a project. To work on something that will take a significant amount of time - like writing a new program, building up a network of contacts, or assembling a medical laboratory - start a progress clock to track it. Based on the goal of the project, the GM will tell you the clock(s) to create and suggest a method by which you might make progress. When you spend time working on the project, describe what your character does to advance the project clock and make an action or fortune roll to advance the clock.
Acquire an asset. You can start a project to obtain a new asset for your character without paying for it in Cash. This might represent building it yourself, making connections in the black market, scavenging and searching scrapyards, and so on. Acquiring an asset works like any other long-term project, and is tracked with one or more progress clocks representing various stages of the acquisition process. The quality of the asset determines how much work it will take to obtain:
Asset Quality | First Clock | Second Clock |
1 | 4 ticks | |
2 | 6 ticks | |
3 | 8 ticks | |
4 | 8 ticks | 4 ticks |
5 | 8 ticks | 6 ticks |
6 | 8 ticks | 8 ticks |
For example, if you’re looking to acquire a gravcar (a quality 6 asset), then the first clock may represent finding possible sources and leads on any “unofficial” vechicles that may be available. The second clock may represent actually obtaining an old beat-up car and getting it in working order. Different approaches might be required for different stages of the project.
Buying Downtime Actions
If a player character wants to make more than two downtime actions in a single downtime phase, they can do so. However, making the extra time costs 1 Cash for each additional action you want to take. This reflects the time and resulting resource drain that ensues while you’re “out of action” and not bringing in any money.
Taking a Breather
When the party goes on an extended mission or adventure, they might spend long periods of time in a dangerous environment where entering the downtime phase just isn’t an option. Or perhaps the party is nervous about a progress clock that has almost filled up, and they decide to skip downtime to avoid any potential escalations.
During such an extended period of activity, the party has the option to take a breather during a lull in the action. It might happen while you’re travelling between planets; when you find somewhere safe to rest for the night; or when the party takes a break to plan and strategise. All that’s required is that everyone agrees it makes sense to take a breather right now.
When you take a breather, at least one player (but more if you want) describes what their character does to relieve the group’s tension. Maybe they crack a joke, reveal something about their past and background, rustle up a home-cooked meal for everyone to enjoy, or even pick a cathartic fight. However you choose to get the party back on the same page, everyone gets to roll 1d and clear that much stress. Taking a breather also resets every character’s trump card, just like entering the downtime phase does.
You can usually only take a breather once per mission or adventure.
Progress Clocks
A progress clock is a circle divided into segments. Draw a progress clock when you need to track ongoing effort against an obstacle or the approach of impending trouble. Some common examples might be:
- A danger clock, which represents a progressive danger, like suspicion growing during a seduction, the proximity of pursuers in a chase, or the alert level of guards on patrol.
- A racing clock, which represents your progress towards a competitive goal. For example, during a chase you might have a clock for the player characters called “Escape” and a clock for the pursuers named “Cornered”.
- A countdown clock, which represents a window of opportunity - how long you have before the security systems turn back on, the target leaves the building, the business closes for the day, et cetera.
- A tug of war clock, which can be filled and emptied to represent a “back-and-forth” situation. If you have a clock that represents morale then some events might tick it up, while others might tick it down.
- A project clock, which might be a long-term project or any other goal a player character is working towards over time. NPCs and factions can have project clocks, too, to fulfil their own agendas.
- A linked clock, which is a kind of clock that must be filled before another clock can be “unlocked”. You might use this for a complex goal with multiple stages.
As a general rule of thumb:
- Use a 4-segment clock for a somewhat complex obstacle or an imminent threat.
- Use a 6-segment clock for a more complicated obstacle or a looming threat.
- Use an 8-segment clock for a daunting obstacle, or a distant threat.
When a progress clock is counting up to something good, like overcoming an opponent or completing a long-term project, then ticks are determined by effect. Limited effect gives you 1 tick; standard effect gives you 2 ticks; great effect gives you 3 ticks. If the result goes beyond great and into extreme effect, then give 5 ticks.
When a progress clock is counting down to something bad, like discovery by guards or the collapse of a building, then ticks are determined by position. Controlled position gives you 1 tick; risky position gives you 2 ticks; desperate position gives you 3 ticks.
Since the default position and effect is risky/standard, you can use that as a rule of thumb when creating clocks. On average, a 4-clock will take 2 successes or consequences to fill; a 6-clock will take 3; and an 8-clock will take 4. Obviously, this can be changed by different approaches or spending resources, but it’s a good baseline.
You don’t have to only tick progress clocks based on position and effect. You can tick them for narrative reasons as well or instead - for example, if your progress clock represents how long it’ll take before word gets out of your latest heist, then maybe every day ticks a new segment. Or the GM might tick the project clocks for factions to reflect the passage of time when you travel between planets.
The Faction Game
The Foundation is a maelstrom of conflicting agendas and powerful groups with their own motivations, and it’s hard to get much done without treading on someone’s toes or playing into someone’s hands. Each notable faction in your current star system is ranked by Tier — a measure of wealth, influence, and scale. Tier is an abstract rating, but it can also be used as a trait when making a fortune roll for a faction.
- A Tier V or VI faction is one of the movers and shakers of the system, wielding immense resources and influence. They are usually amongst the system’s ruling class or governance, whether that’s officially true or not.
- A Tier III or IV faction is a major player, with a strong base of power and connections. They might be a local government, powerful corporation, or a subversive organisation with serious weight to throw around.
- A Tier I or II faction is a small-time group or a local organisation. They might have power or reach, but not both. They’re on the way up, or they occupy a comfortable niche.
- A Tier 0 faction isn’t truly a faction yet. It’s a loose association or a small party that may one day become a faction, but not without building more connections and reputation.
Each faction is local to the star system you’re currently playing in. The Foundation Government may be an interstellar power with fleets of starships and billions of credits at their disposal, but that doesn’t mean they can bring it all to bear on some distant frontier colony. Out there, they might only be a Tier II faction - not even one of the big players.
In addition to Tier, each faction also has a hold. Hold represents how well a faction can maintain their current position on the ladder. If the faction has strong hold, then they are comfortable and secure in their power - and may even be considering expanding. If the faction has weak hold, then they are shaky and struggling to maintain their position. If the player characters are able to strike a devastating blow to a faction, or if a rival group makes a serious move against them, then the faction’s hold may be reduced from strong to weak. If something happens to harm a faction that already has weak hold, then they lose a Tier (and their hold remains weak).
Finally, each faction has an agenda. This is a progress clock which works similar to a long-term project - you don’t need one for every faction, just the ones that are currently relevant. When the player characters enter the downtime phase, the GM can choose to advance one or two of these faction clocks as an escalation. If you’re not sure how much to advance them, you can always make a fortune roll using the faction’s Tier. When the progress clock fills, that faction achieves their agenda - this may change their Tier or hold, affect another faction, or simply shake up the current situation and introduce new twists to the story.
Detailing a Faction
The details of a faction help to flesh them out, set them apart from each other, and turn them into a generator for plot hooks. Between sessions, decide on the following details for factions you’re interested in, or ones that are currently relevant to the story:
- Holdings: This could be physical turf, like “the mines” or metaphorical claims, like “the city’s bureaucracy”.
- Notables: Who are the faction’s leaders and lieutenants? Are there any interesting characters who stand out?
- Quirks: What sets this faction apart from the others?
- Allies: Which other factions might care if something happens to them?
- Enemies: Which other factions might help to ruin their day?
- Situation: What’s currently going on with them, internally? What are they dealing with or striving for at the moment?
Bonds and Grudges
In this game, we’re following the exploits of a small party of punks and firebrands as they contend with the powerful forces that surround them. The player characters don’t have the kind of power and influence they’d need to negotiate with factions on an equal footing. However, they can attain status or notoriety with factions in the form of bonds and grudges.
A bond is a connection between your party and a faction. It represents a favour they owe you, a good turn they haven’t forgotten about, or a sense of loyalty and kinship the faction feels towards you. The GM might give you a bond with a faction when you complete a mission or adventure that helps their interests or indebts them to you. You can have a maximum of three bonds with a faction at any given time.
A grudge is the opposite of a bond. It represents the payback you’ve got coming to you, a slight they haven’t forgotten about, or a sense of enmity and antipathy the faction feels towards you. The GM might give you a grudge from a faction when you complete a mission or adventure that hurts their interests or places you in debt to them. You can have a maximum of three grudges with a faction at any given time.
Bonds and grudges are always temporary - factions don’t have a long memory when it comes to individuals, and both will get spent and used up eventually. Having three bonds with a faction doesn’t mean that you’re steadfast allies. Having three grudges doesn’t mean that you’re at war. Factions don’t think of small-time players like your group in that way. It does give you a general idea of how that faction feels about you right now, though.
It’s quite valid to have both bonds and grudges with the same faction. From the perspective of a small group like your party, factions aren’t monolithic entities - they’re made up of people that all have their own agendas. It’s quite possible for certain forces within a faction to be quite fond of you even while others would like nothing more than to ruin your day. If you have 3 bonds and 3 grudges with a faction, all it means is that your group is divisive and controversial within the faction, and probably the subject of a bit of internal strife.
Spending Bonds
Bonds are a general sense of how a faction feels about you right now, but they’re also a resource that you can cash in. When you spend a bond, you leverage your connections with a faction to get some kind of favour from them. If you want something really big from the faction, you might need to spend more than one bond on it. The bond gets used up when you spend it because the faction considers they’ve repaid the favour, or because you’ve used up some of your goodwill with them.
The most common way to spend a bond is for a narrative benefit, which affects the fictional details of your situation. If you have a bond with the local government authority, you might spend it to call in a favour and get the impoundment order on your ship lifted, no questions asked. This could allow you to bypass an obstacle without rolling, or make the position and/or effect of a roll more favourable.
If you’re asking for something big or controversial and it’s not clear that the faction would be willing or able to help, the GM can make a fortune roll with 1d for each bond you spend. Since you’re spending a bond, you’ll get something from the faction even on a failure - but the results of the fortune roll will determine how far they’re willing to go on your behalf.
If the favour you’re asking for is material in nature - like a tangible asset, the use of a vehicle or service in the local area, the assistance of an expert or a gang, or anything else that seems reasonable for the faction to provide you - then make a fortune roll with 1d per bond spent. The result of your roll indicates what quality of asset or favour the faction is willing or able to provide you in exchange for a bond:
- 1-3. Quality is equal to Tier-1.
- 4-5. Quality is equal to Tier.
- 6. Quality is equal to Tier+1.
- 66. Quality is equal to Tier+2.
If the quality you rolled doesn’t cover the thing you are asking for, then the faction can’t or won’t provide it for you, or they can’t cover the entire cost. You might need to settle for a cheaper equivalent or one with less features, a temporary or consumable version, or cover part of the cost yourself.
Spending Grudges
Just as players can spend bonds, the GM can spend grudges. When the GM decides to spend a grudge, it’s time to pay: the faction you’ve slighted has decided to interfere with you in some way, or they’re tired of waiting for you to make good on your promises and debts and their patience has officially run out. The grudge gets used up when the GM spends it because the faction considers the score to be settled (or part of it), or because they’ve decided it’s not worth spending any more resources to go after you.
There are two main ways for the GM to spend a grudge:
- When the players enter the downtime phase, spend a grudge to introduce an escalation originating from that faction - such as an entanglement or a new progress clock. For example, the faction might demand repayment of a debt, pressure the party into taking a job, or even make an open reprisal against you.
- Spend a grudge to introduce a complication that directly originates from that faction. For example, the faction might provide reinforcements for the party’s enemies (and the faction’s Tier determines their quality and scale). Or if the party is trying to negotiate with the faction, the local branch might be biased against them from the start.
Note that as written, grudges aren’t really a currency that the GM spends in the same way that players do. The game already gives the GM permission to create entanglements, start progress clocks, and introduce complications. Grudges are mostly there to serve as a prompt and a guide for the GM - if it’s time for an entanglement or a complication, you can look at which factions have grudges against the players for inspiration. Just like progress clocks, grudges are a way to telegraph future badness and then follow through on it.
Clearing Grudges
Grudges go away when the GM spends them, but the player characters might want to make amends with a faction and clear a grudge before it becomes a problem for them. In other cases, the GM might use a grudge to represent simmering resentment which must be dealt with before it boils over. For example, if you ask a faction for a favour and you don’t have any bonds to spend, the GM might give them a grudge to represent the fact that you’re in debt with them. If you don’t clear the grudge before the GM cashes it in, they’ll get tired of waiting for repayment and come after you.
Often, getting rid of a grudge is as simple as spending a bond. If you do some kind of service for the faction in question, they might be willing to overlook the difficulties you’ve caused them. Or maybe you have the ear of someone prominent within the faction, and you can get them to call off the hounds and settle your debts for you. If you don’t have any bonds to spend, then finding some way to help the faction out and get a bond with them might be all you need to do.
In some cases, the GM will decide that you need to do something specific to clear a grudge. Maybe you pissed off someone important, or maybe the faction is so angry that they’re not willing to work with you at all and won’t accept your overtures of peace. In that case, you’ll usually need to fulfil some kind of special mission or long-term project to make amends and clear the grudge.
Running the Game
The sections above tell you how players create their characters and perform actions, along with all the resources and consequences that go along with those actions. As the GM, you have your own rules to follow: we divide them up into principles and actions. Your principles are the bedrock you can fall back on to guide your decision-making, help choose your actions and set the tone of the world.
Never prep plot. Prep locations, notable NPCs, events that are currently happening or that might happen, and situations. Don’t decide what will happen, or how the story ends. Don’t steer the game toward certain outcomes or events; play to find out what happens. Let everything flow from the fiction.
Tell the truth. Always try to convey the fictional world honestly, and say what your prep demands. Be aware of the potential fiction vs. the established fiction. Potential fiction is the cloud of possibilities that exists in your head, notional ideas like “this facility probably has some high-tech security systems” or “the courtyard is cluttered with statues”. You can freely incorporate these ideas into the ongoing scene to answer questions or address the results of rolls.
Once these details have become established fiction, they’re part of the game. They exist in the world, and can be leveraged by the players. Be a supportive and fair advocate of the integrity of established fiction, so the world doesn’t seem contrived.
Be a fan of the characters. The player characters live in a world that is hostile and selfish; they have no shortage of enemies. They don’t need the GM to be an adversary, too. Be interested in the characters, excited about their victories, and enthusiastic about their goals.
Paint the world with a scalpel. The rich and the powerful of the Foundation live in a world that’s separated from ordinary people by an almost impossible divide. They know their power depends on turning everyone else against each other and distracting them with arbitrary divisions. The player characters live on the fringes and in the cracks of this society; show them what that looks like. Cut the world into slices, show the players the fine lines that surround them, and dare their characters to cross them.
Make it real, then make it haunted. The Foundation is a place you could imagine humanity actually ending up, not too far in the future. Their problems and challenges are recognisable in the present day, and the power dynamics they struggle against have been enforced by the advancement of technology, not erased by it. But they also live in a world ruled by forces that are beyond understanding or control: the mysteries of otherspace, unpredictable psionic powers and bizarre aliens that defy every attempt to understand them. Space is haunted and it is weird; show that to the players.
Remind them where they are. The Foundation doesn’t look the same everywhere; not even close. In the mansions of the oligarchs and the offices of the megacorps, it’s all clean lines, glittering lights and futuristic tech. Elsewhere in the Foundation, technology is clunky, noisy and heavily used. Surround the players with a world that’s making do with the offcasts of the rich and last generation’s cutting edge, then show them the disparity when they step out of that world. The future is here: it’s just not evenly distributed.
Think about the big picture. While the players are engaged with the obstacles and threats in front of their characters, think about what’s going on elsewhere. Are there characters or factions that might have a reason to come here and get involved? Are there events ongoing that could affect what’s happening here? Bring in offscreen problems or details to show the players that everything is interconnected and make the world feel real.
GM Actions
The GM is a player in the game too, and this section contains their actions. You can use them to prepare for the game, and you can use them to decide what to do when it’s your turn to contribute to the story. Many of them might just seem like GMing advice, and they are! But they’re also part of the game’s rules. You are free to ignore them, but following these rules will firmly establish which parts of the story are under the players’ control, and which parts are under yours. The end result will be a more satisfying and believable world.
Provide an opportunity. When the players are looking for something to do, step in and provide an opportunity to keep the game from stalling out. The GM doesn’t prep plot, so you don’t need to decide what the players will do next or plan out their activities. Give them a thread to pull on, an obvious way to get closer to their goals, or a situation they might want to do something about. Then see what they do.
Follow the players’ lead. When the players know what they want to do, they’re the ones presenting the opportunity. Ask clarifying questions until you have enough basic information to create the scenario. It’s up to them whether they want to investigate further or go straight into the action.
Ask a question. Whenever you have a question and the answer isn’t obvious, ask it. Asking questions is the heart and soul of running a roleplaying game. You might:
- Ask clarifying questions to establish the details of the fiction. Are you sneaking in together or splitting up? Where on the ship are you when the lights all go out?
- Ask evocative questions about the players’ characters. Are you lying, or do you believe that? Can you really bring yourself to betray your former comrades?
- Ask leading questions to telegraph your thoughts. If you start shooting, won’t the reactor be endangered? Do you think someone might notice you climbing up here?
- Ask trivial questions to fill the world with flavour. What is the theme of the weird bar you end up in? What did you do to make the ship feel like home?
- Ask for help when you are uncertain or stuck; let the players contribute to the world from within their characters’ experience and frame of reference.
You don’t have to choose between conveying the fictional world honestly and telling a collaborative story with the players. You can do both. If you’re making something up anyway, you might as well ask for help. You don’t have to do it alone.
Adjust the resolution. Time passes at the speed necessary to answer the questions that arise in play. Feel free to zoom out and trim off the time that would otherwise be dedicated to fruitless planning, unnecessary hesitation or tedious legwork. You might resolve a long journey with a brief description, resolve a problem along the way with a single action roll, or make an engagement roll to see how the initial approach goes. Then, when they reach their destination, “zoom in” on the first obstacle: Ok, you can see the entrance to the alien ruin - about 500 feet up a sheer cliff face. How are you going to get in?
Telegraph trouble. If there’s a hazard or threat that’s about to hit, show it to the players and ask what they do. If they’re about to do something risky, tell them what the consequences might be and ask what they do. Action is usually driven by the players, so when something threatens their characters, they get to decide how and if they respond to it. Telegraphing trouble also makes it easier to come up with consequences when it’s time to follow through, because they follow naturally from the trouble you telegraphed. The sniper notices you drawing your gun, and the barrel of her rifle swivels towards you. What do you do?
Follow through. If you’ve telegraphed a threat, you can go ahead and follow through when it hits - by changing the situation or inflicting a consequence. When a player rolls a failure or partial success on an action roll, you follow through by inflicting a consequence and asking if they want to resist. You can also follow through if a threat is ready and able to manifest without clear interference - for example, if the players completely ignore it, if they have no way to stop it, or if a progress clock fills up. You manage to shepherd the civilians to safety, but the sniper isn’t feeling generous. She puts a bullet through your leg to slow you down. Would you like to resist that?
Initiate action. Normally you have to telegraph trouble before it strikes, but dangerous NPCs and unexpected threats can seize the initiative from the players and change the fiction, or even inflict consequences on player characters directly. You can also initiate action when the fiction demands it - for example, you can have an allied NPC do something to help the players in a fight. In that case, either decide how it resolves according to the fiction, or use a fortune roll to disclaim decision making. Even as you consider looking for a safer way in, the entrance to the ruins suddenly slams shut behind you. Going back won’t be as easy as getting in.
Tick a clock. Draw a progress clock whenever it feels right, and use them to help track progress in the fiction. You can telegraph trouble that isn’t yet obvious to the player characters by creating a new clock to represent an impending threat. You can follow through on a threat without having it fully manifest by ticking a clock. Progress clocks are a good way to represent less straightforward threats, to keep track of more abstract hazards, or to move the fiction along without being heavy-handed. When in doubt, tick a clock.
Session Prep
When it comes to preparing for Worlds in the Dark, less is more. We never prep plot, so you shouldn’t plan out each session in detail. Instead, focus your attention on building up a reservoir of useful ideas to draw on when you need a little inspiration. Here’s an example of a few things you might prepare beforehand:
- Create 1-3 premade opportunities or problems for the player characters to come across.
- Come up with a few interesting NPCs that might appear during the session.
- Come up with a few interesting complications that might occur during the session.
This will probably take you 30 to 60 minutes the first time you do it. Any elements that don’t get used can be saved or reworked for future sessions, so you’ll probably only need to come up with a few new things each session to replenish the reservoir. You may want to make opportunities disappear or problems develop if they’re ignored for too long, however.
When it comes to preparing NPCs and complications, go with whatever you think will make a cool moment and whatever you’d like to see come up in the session. You can base them on the opportunities and problems you have come up with, but try not to make them too closely linked to any specific situation. If you resist the urge to make them “fit”, they’re more likely to be useful when you’re drawing a blank.
Creating Opportunities
An opportunity is a situation which the player characters are uniquely positioned to take advantage of, which could bring them some profit or help them to advance their goals. It consists of:
- A hook, which is how you found out about the opportunity.
- A focus, which tells you what the nature of the opportunity is and what you stand to gain.
- A situation, which tells you what’s going on and what some of the moving parts are.
- A location, which tells you where the opportunity is and gives you some idea of the obstacles you might encounter.
- An obvious vector for a plan. This tells you one of the ways you can seize the opportunity (but it’s rarely the only way).
With additional research or legwork, the players may be able to identify less obvious vectors, connected factions that might get involved (or want to be involved), or secrets that may make exploiting the opportunity easier or open up secondary objectives.
Creating Problems
A problem is a tense situation balanced on a knife’s edge, which could go either way. Some problems force the player characters to get involved, one way or another. Other problems force the players to make a choice about whether they want to get involved or not. A problem consists of:
- A hook, which is how you became aware of the problem.
- A focus, which tells you what the root cause of the problem is. Is it money, revenge, power, danger, ideology, resources?
- A situation, which tells you what’s going on and what some of the moving parts are.
- A restraint, which is the reason the problem hasn’t boiled over or resolved itself (yet).
- A default outcome, if the players don’t get involved. If it’s really bad, not getting involved may not seem like an option.
There may or may not also be a twist, which reveals that the problem is not as straightforward as it may have seemed. Research or legwork might help to reveal the twist before the players get involved, or before it’s too late - if not, it tends to come up at the most dramatic time.
Running NPCs
Even though they don’t make action rolls like the player characters do, there are several ways for non-player characters and their capabilities to manifest in the fiction. The rules given in this section apply to both individual NPCs and to entire groups of characters, like hired cohorts or enemy gangs. The same principles also apply to non-human creatures like aliens or beasts.
Most commonly, NPCs getting involved with an action roll will factor into position and effect, influencing factors like scale and quality. If you have backup in a fight, then it might give you an advantage in terms of scale; if you’re outnumbered by the enemy, it’s likely to be the other way around. Their exact capabilities only matter insofar as they influence position and effect - being outnumbered by trained soldiers is very different from being outnumbered by disorganised thugs, after all.
If an NPC is acting on their own and you’re not sure how it’s going to go for them, you can make a fortune roll with their quality rating to see how they fare. If two NPCs (or two groups) are contending with each other, you can make a fortune roll for each side and compare the results to create a narrative about how their conflict unfolds. Of course, you can also just decide what happens - as always, fortune rolls are a tool for the GM to resolve uncertainty and disclaim decision making.
NPCs can also participate in a group action as long as it makes sense for them to do so, rolling their quality to contribute just like a player character would. However, group actions must always be led by a player character, as NPCs cannot take stress.
Quality
You can summarise the overall effectiveness and calibre of an NPC by assigning them a quality rating. This is a number from 0 to 6 which gives you a general measurement of how formidable, dangerous or skilled the NPC is in their area of expertise.
When setting the quality rating of an NPC, you can use any kind of trait or rating that applies. If you hire a cohort, they already have a quality rating based on how much you paid for them. Elite soldiers sent to ruin your day by a Tier IV faction will probably be quality 4 - although that doesn’t mean every single member of the organisation is that formidable.
If no trait or rating applies, you can also use this list as a rough guideline for “threats” and combat-oriented NPCs:
- Quality 0: A minimal threat. An unarmed civilian, a domestic animal, a mild hazard, a minor complication, a weak force.
- Quality 1-2: A standard threat. An armed grunt or guard, a dangerous beast, a life-threatening hazard, a significant complication, a moderate force.
- Quality 3-4: A formidable threat. An elite operative, a deadly monster, an out-of-control hazard, a severe complication, a serious force.
- Quality 5-6: An extreme threat. An overwhelming opponent, a terrifying monstrosity, a natural disaster, an outright crisis, a devastating force.
You can use an NPC’s quality rating for a fortune roll when their quality is tested, as long it makes sense for the task at hand. A team of quality 3 scientists would roll 3 dice if they need to figure out a complex problem or manufacture drugs with limited equipment. If it’s a stretch, you might impose a dice penalty - for example, those quality 3 scientists only roll 2 dice to hack into a corporate mainframe. If they got dragged into gunfight, on the other hand, they would probably roll 0 dice (or wouldn’t even roll at all).
When determining the position and effect of an action roll to overcome an opponent, you can consider its quality rating if it makes sense to do so. If you have 2 dots in Assault and you’re trying to punch out a quality 3 bruiser, you might be outclassed. If you’re trying to talk circles around them, then their quality might not be the most important factor to consider.
Of course, this also means that even a master with 4 dots in a specialty is going to be outclassed by quality 5 and 6 opponents - there’s always a bigger fish. Going up against an extreme threat is always going to be shaky, and you’ll have to get creative if you want to be on an even footing. You might even the playing field against such formidable opponents by securing some kind of advantage (potency), by using sophisticated or specialised equipment (quality), or with overwhelming force (scale). As usual when setting position and effect, the dominant factor is what matters.
Initiative
If an NPC is quality 3 or above, they are skilled. They may be able to take the initiative and force the players to react to them. It’s still only the player characters that roll, but the NPC gets to take control of the narrative in a way that usually only players are allowed to do. For example, you might say: “She corners you at the top of the stairs and tries to wrestle you into cuffs. What do you do?”. The player then makes their action as usual, but they’ve been placed on the back foot and are forced to react to the situation.
If an NPC is quality 5 or above, they are a master. Masterful NPCs can inflict consequences directly on the player characters without a roll, making them dangerous to even engage. For example, if the player characters are contending with a masterful sniper, you might simply inform them that they have been shot and ask whether they wish to resist the consequence. It’s up to them whether they want to accept the injury or spend stress to reduce it.
These rules apply to friendly NPCs as well as hostile ones. If you have a powerful ally on your side, they can act on their own and seize the initiative rather than just factoring into your action rolls. As usual, it’s up to the GM whether they simply narrate what happens or use a fortune roll to determine the outcome.
Magnitude
The magnitude table is provided as an optional tool to help the GM make judgment calls when setting position and effect. You can use it to compare different types of factor like area, scale or distance. It’s not meant to be a rigid restriction or mathematical formula to replace those judgement calls, just a useful guide.
Quality/Tier | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Scale | 1 or 2 people | 3+ people | 12+ people | 20+ people | 40+ people | 80+ people | 120+ people |
Area | a closet | small room | large room | several rooms | small building | large building | city block |
Calibre | poor | adequate | good | excellent | superior | impeccable | legendary |
Force | weak | moderate | strong | serious | powerful | overwhelming | devastating |
Duration | a few moments | a few minutes | an hour | a few hours | a day | several days | a week |
Range | within reach | a dozen paces | a stone’s throw | down the street | several blocks away | a few kilometers | across the city |
Some ways to use this table:
- To figure out the scope of an obstacle based on quality or Tier - for example, how many thugs are sent after you by a Tier III faction?
- To compare two factors of the same type - for example, what is the scale of your side versus the enemy side? Is it big enough to make a difference?
- To compare two factors of different types - for example, what quality of explosive will you need to create an explosion that will affect a “large room”?
- To judge a change in effect - for example, how does limited effect reduce the duration of something that normally lasts an hour?