July ’11
Characters have a number of properties: Aspects, Skills, Experience Points, Stress Tracks and Consequences.
A new player character starts with:
You get the clothes you stand up in, appropriate to your social station and Assets. You also have the reasonable tools of your chosen background Aspects – but one Aspect’s only, presumably the main or latest way you have of supporting yourself. Other kit is available for purchase, whether by cash or by taking on debt. N.B. You can be imprisoned for debt if you don’t meet the repayment.
This does not extend to major property holdings; use Aspects for those if you want them to be usefully accessible in the game.
Roll 2d6 and add a relevant skill.
If you can invoke relevant Aspects you can re-roll one or both dice: your choice which, usually for the cost of an Experience Point.
You’re either aiming to beat a target difficulty number, or to beat the opposition’s roll+modifier – or both.
These are rated on consistency of success by the basic competence level, someone with a +1 skill, so rolling 3-13.
(Descriptive guidelines rather than absolute determinations)
| Success | Degree | Magnitude | Duration | &c. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Match | in the balance | touch | Instant | not failed, try again? |
| 1 | Minimal | Slight | a Round | |
| 2 | Fair | Minor | a scene | |
| 3 | Solid | Moderate | until dawn/dusk | |
| 4 | Good | Moderate | Day | defence gets spin |
| 5 | Significant | Major | Session | |
| 6 | Near Perfect | Overwhelming | Longer term - next session? |
The Match result is ambiguous. If a merest touch suffices, it is a minimal success, but it is not enough to e.g. damage a foe unless you’re wielding a weapon which adds a damage bonus. If you are looking for a magnitude of success and it is something that doesn’t absolutely have to be done right first time you can try again, taking the necessary time and effort to retry the task.
A Failure is exactly that, not that you haven’t succeeded yet. The lock has defeated your attempts to pick it, further efforts will get you nowhere – come back another day. Where there are alternatives possible though you can try another approach: for instance a small degree of failure probably just indicates a bad route when climbing a cliff; back off and try another. A large failure might indicate you’ve taken the quick way down.
Aspects are word or phrase which tells you something important about the person, place or thing bearing it. All characters and some things have Aspects.
Aspects can be relationships, beliefs, catchphrases, descriptions, items, people, professions, – anything that is relevant and can be described in a pithy word or phrase.
(A character’s Aspects must all be unique, for ease of bookkeeping and to avoid an infelicitous skill-like level structure.)
Almost any 2d6 roll may be affected by invoking, “tagging”, a relevant Aspect.
Explain how you are using the Aspect to affect the roll. If it is agreed roll an extra die. Pay a Point from your Experience Pool, unless the Aspect is specifically Free-Taggable. You can add as many dice as you like, limited by the number of relevant Aspects and by the number of Experience points in the Pool to fuel them.
Aspects are the general purpose system tool when there’s not a specific system for something. If it is interesting it is probably dealt with as an Aspect.
Aspects can reflect background information for characters – e.g. all player characters have the (free) Aspect Member of the Society for Effectual Redress and can claim knowledge of the Society, its ways, members and any benefits of membership which may apply in a situation.
Characters can declare small points of fact covered by an Aspect to be true by making the declaration and, if it is agreed, paying an Experience Point.
Some skills may not be used without possessing a particular Aspect. E.g.:
Things that are too tedious to work out in detail can be declared as an Aspect. For instance: a mechanism that needs constant attention can be taken as an Aspect, requiring Experience Points to run, as shorthand for the time and skill rolls it would otherwise need.
The act of setting an Aspect on someone or somewhere or something. This will need a successful skill roll, either at a fixed level against something or somewhere, or an actively opposed roll and counter-roll against someone.
If successful the target of the manoeuvre now has that Aspect for the rest of the scene or until another manoeuvre removes it. It can be Free-tagged once and thereafter tagged normally for an Experience Pool Point.
A Manoeuvre can also be used to un-set an Aspect (and some Aspects are naturally transient or may be removed by other events).
Characters have a pile of experience points, which can be used during a game to affect rolls via Aspects, or between games to improve Skills.
A character’s experience total is the points given at character creation plus those awarded for play and contributions to the game, minus those spent on getting skills.
Experience Points are handed out:
One experience point can be converted to one skill level. See Skills. Skills are always available to a character, whereas Experience Points can be used up, temporarily, during the game.
For every 4 points you spend on Skills you can take another Aspect.
Any experience points you haven’t spent on skills at the start of a game are copied to your experience pool.
Experience Points can come and go from the pool during the game, but your underlying total is untouched.
Characters usually start a session with a full experience pool. There may be exceptions if this is an immediate run-on from a previous game.
During a game expended experience pool points are refreshed by 1d6 upon taking a night’s rest and partaking of a dish of Mr Kent’s Finest Dark Reviver†. Excess points, if you’ve received some in the course of play, are lost during the rest.
† other coffee outlets also exist.
Skills are what a character can do.
For most things the skill level is added to a 2d6 dice roll to check how well you’ve done something, or whether you done it better than the next person.
Skills are frozen experience. That is, each permanently available, narrow use, Skill level point costs the investment of a widely applicable, but volatile, Experience point.
You must have more lower level skills than higher level skills.
For each skill above +1, you must have one more skill at the lower level. So for a +3 skill, you must also have two +2 skills and thus three +1 skills, costing 10 experience points in total. You could also spend those 10 points as ten skills at +1, or three +2 and four at +1, but not as one at +1 and three at +3.
If you’ve no skill relevant to the situation to hand, you roll at an effective skill of -2 for common tasks.
If the relevant skill is in some way Arcane or Obscure the check may be at a worse modifier, or outright impossible to the uninitiated.
If you have only a sort-of-relevant or a related skill, roll at Skill = 0.
If two skills are relevant to a check but one limits the other, roll once using the lower skill value (the classic example being shooting from horseback: roll the lower of Ride or Firearms).
This is the revised (v3) skills list. Existing (pre March 2011 realtime) characters may need to be rebuilt.
June 11 Change Notes: Rapport is now Charm. Oratory is back in. There is a Brawl skill and a Combat skill rather than the half dozen fine divisions of the ’07 system or the Close-Combat + Specialisation of the late ’10 test.
July 11 Changes: seems ‘awareness’ and ‘perception’ were causing some people cognitive dissonance, so they’ve been renamed Alertness and Investigation.
Some of these skills have wider system significance than others – your attention is respectfully directed to Agility, Assets, Alertness, Endurance, and Resolve.
In all bargins, whether to fight or to marry, or concerning any other such business, little previous ceremony is required to bring the matter to an issue when both parties are really in earnest.
—Henry Fielding, “Tom Jones”
A fighting combat Round is a flexible period of time of one third to a half minute.
Characters take Turns to act in order of Initiative, within Rounds. They can take one Full Action and Defend themselves against others’ actions each turn.
First turn in the round starts with the winner of a 2d6 + Alertness initiative check. Turns then proceed in order around the table (for convenience) unless rearranged by Waits.
Space is divided into functional areas, rather than being gridded in hexes, squares, etc.
If people can talk to each other without raising their voices they are likely to be in the same zone, so a room might be a zone. The same room cluttered by furniture might be more than one zone if it's difficult to move through. Two areas separated by a doorway are two different zones. Zones are bigger in open spaces.
Rule-of-thumb: Characters in the same zone can punch each other, in adjacent zones can poke things at each other by agreement, two zones apart can throw things, three will have to shoot, and at five are likely out of sight behind too much street clutter to interact.
Generally characters can move to wherever they need to be within a Zone without checks. They can usually move between two adjacent Zones in a turn, if there is a clear way.
See the Sprint Action for cases where a turn is dedicated to movement.
Free: Characters can take any reasonably brief actions which don’t interfere with the main Action of the turn: glance down an alley, shout a few words, or both even.
Supplemental, at -1 to the main Action. Characters may also do something slightly more involved for a -1 penalty: Move 1 zone, draw and cock a pistol, grab a coffe pot ready to throw it as the main action. Things that don’t need a roll and don’t conflict with the main Action.
Try to inflict stress or Take Out an opponent.
Roll 2d6 + a combat skill
If the defence is less than the attack, the attack is successful.
Successful attacks inflict the difference between attack and defence as Stress, adding any weapon damage bonus.
Mark off that (only that) stress box on the defender. See Stress & Consequences below.
If the defence is noticeably better than the attack successful, by 4 or more, the attacker is over-extended, off-balance or whatever and suffers a temporary disadvantage Aspect which can be free-tagged (once) by the defender or allies. Spin lasts until the attacker’s next turn when he, she or it automatically recovers.
+0: unarmed brawling: fists & boots.
+1: small, light or improvised weapons such as knives, coshes, brass knuckles, bottles, pocket pistol, blunderbuss at range 1+.
+2: swords, cudgels, most firearms, tomahawk, bow.
+3: pole-arms, blunderbuss at 0 range.
+4: volley-fire (infantry platoon, volley gun?), swivel gun
Generally: thrown things 2 zones, pistols 3 zones, muskets 4 zones. In the furthest zone there’s an free-tagged At Long Range Aspect to the target and the Damage Bonus is reduced by 1 (but not below 0).
Grenades (explosives) are area-effect weapons attacking everything in a Zone.
Throwing a grenade (or anything else really) into another zone is simple Agility roll vs difficulty 7, -2 for range 2 and possibly each zone thereafter. Throwing through doors, over walls or inside enclosed spaces will be more difficult.
An excess of 3+, allows the thrower to apply an On Target free-taggable Aspect to someone or something in the zone. (I’ll hear arguments that the Something may be a close group of Someones.)
Once the grenade has arrived wherever it is going, roll the Attack on Firearms Skill against all in the Zone, who defend on Agility (dodge, duck and cover, etc.) or perhaps Resolve (for stiff upper lip defences against Composure attacks). That is one Attack roll (see Fizzle below), which tags the On Target aspect from the throw, vs multiple defences.
The On Target aspected target suffers Health stress, others in the zone take Composure stress.
Fizzle: A natural Attack roll of 2 or 3 is a Fizzle: the grenade just sits there with smoke coming out of the fuse hole… Roll again on the thrower’s next Turn. An EVEN dice result is a ‘phut’ - the fuse goes out. An Odd roll is adjudicated as a normal Firearms attack attack, as above.
Set a Aspect on a character or the location, zone or scene for subsequent tactical advantage.
Against an opponent there will be a Manoeuvre vs Defence contest of skills. Against the surroundings it’ll be a skill roll vs fixed difficulty. If the Manoeuvre is successful the Aspect is placed and can be tagged subsequently – the first time for free, subsequently for the usual Experience Point.
Manoeuvre Aspects are temporary, lasting no longer than the scene and likely less than that, either because of changes to the tactical situation make them irrelevant, or because another Manoeuvre removes the Aspect.
Exempli gratia:
Team Work: invoking the Aspect set by the Manoeuvre isn’t exclusive to the setter. Anyone on their side can use the Aspect if they can be aware of it. First user gets the free tag. Some Aspects, like Target aspect above are unique to the setter though and can’t be passed on. You can’t free-tag an Aspect set by the opposition.
Try to prevent something from happening. Say what action you want to prevent and roll an appropriate skill. The result is the Block’s strength, and must be beaten in an appropriate skill roll by anyone wanting to succeed in the named action. The Block lasts until the Blocker’s next turn.
A special case of block, restraining an opponent by Strength rather than blocking a specific action. To Grapple you have to:
The Aspect tagged has to be something that could reasonably be take advantage of to lay hands on the target of the grapple, likely from an earlier Manoeuvre: Disarmed, Off-balance, Blinded of the examples above would all be good. And Distracted for that matter.
The target has to beat the grapple strength to do anything physical, and can’t move (Sprint or move Zones) at all.
Grapple Options: On the other hand once the grapple has been successfully applied, in subsequent turns the Grappler can make take any one of the following supplemental actions while attempting to maintaining the grapple as the main Action of the turn:
(As these are supplemental actions the Strength roll for the block is then at -1 as noted above.)
Releasing the Grapple: you can release a grapple at will and perform a normal action, such as an Attack, a Manoeuvre (that wasn’t possible while grappling), or move the opponent a Zone (the bum’s rush out of the door perhaps). The opponent gets a defence in these cases as the grapple is off now.
Breaking a Grapple: beat the Grapple strength with an Action which would reasonably break the grappler’s grip. Probably a Brawl attack.
Dedicating a Turn to movement allows a character to pass through difficult terrain more quickly, or move further.
ALERT: —dice system exception here!—
Move = Absolute (d6 - d6) + Agility
(That’s subtract the lower d6 from the higher d6 for a 0-5 result then add Agility)
The maximum distance in actual Zones that can moved in a Turn is 4 Zones, but excess can be used to discount the penalties of Difficult Terrain.
The Zone moves assume there is a clear way between them. Either the Zones are conceptual divisions of a larger space with no actual physical separation, or there is an open door way, or gate between them. If there is a barrier such as a wall or fence with no convenient way through, movement between zones costs more to climb the barrier.
Some Zones might also cost more to move through; a Cluttered room or a Busy street might cost 2 to move through. Scrambling over a gate 3, climbing a wall 4, &c
A character can choose to Wait, foregoing their initiative position to react to another’s Turn. If the Waiting character choses to act then that changes their initiative order for the rest of the encounter (unless they choose to Wait again). If they don’t act then they keep their previous initiative place, just wait a turn.
Example: lurking behind a door for someone to walk through, then taking a Manoeuvre or Attack action.
Declaring this as your action gives +2 on defensive rolls against attack or manoeuvre.
Whatever’s not covered above – probably some (multi-) round long distraction such as loading a gun, picking a lock, Philosophising, or whatnot. The Distraction element is probably worth a free-taggable Aspect of “Sitting Duck”.
N.B. Defence rolls take place outside the character’s active Turn, even if they’ve taken Full Defence as their Action.
Choose a skill to defend with in response to an Attack or Manoeuvre.
Once a particular skill is used for a defence that result remains ‘on the table’ for any further uses of that particular defence in the Turn.
Different skills can be used against different attacks.
Brawl skill can defend against Brawl attacks, and Weapons attack with small items such as knives and coshes.
Weapons can defend against Weapons and Brawl attacks.
Firearms skill can’t be used to defend by shooting: use it as a club (Weapons skill). Similarly this also applies to bows, slings and the like.
Agility skill (i.e. dodge) can be used as a defence against all.
Rather than adding up hit points you tick off Stress boxes on a track. Stress can be mitigated completely or partially by taking a Consequence instead
There are stress tracks for Health (physical), Composure (mental), and Wealth.
Stress has no effect itself on rolls or abilities, it just accumulates until the character runs out of stress track boxes.
Hit for N stress? So tick off the Nth Stress box.
If the Nth box is already used then the damage rolls up to the next free box.
If N is greater than the length of the Stress track, or has rolled past the end of the track the character is Taken Out.
The character has lost the will/ability to resist. The Victor decides what happens, within the terms of the contest.
Health and Composure stress tracks are cleared after a night’s rest and a strong coffee.
Wealth stress track hits are cleared at the end of a session in which the character takes no Wealth stress or consequences.
Rather than take too may stress hits and be Taken Out characters can chose to take a Consequence instead. This is a taggable temporary aspect. How long it lasts depends on how the severity of the consequence. Characters have three consequence slots but four consequence options:
| Consequence | Mitigates | examples | lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slight | 2 | bruised hand, black eye, winded, flustered, distracted, drunk | a day |
| Moderate | 4 | bleeding cut, burns, twisted ankle, exhausted | a week |
| Heavy | 6 | broken limb, deep burns, crippling shame, loss of nerve | a month |
| Extreme | 8 | crippling injuries: lost body parts, geases or phobias | permanent: replaces a character Aspect |
Duration assumes the necessary circumstances for recovery pertain: if the character doesn’t get rest or treatment or whatever to allow recovery to start then the consequences remain.
It seems that the Kabbala is right, more or less. The best tool for making philosophical sense of the Otherworld and its intrusions and effects on Creation is the Tree of Life, the Otz Chaim, and its branches, the Sephirot (singular: Sephira).
The Tree of Life spans creation from the heights of the realm of the Creative Power (Ein Sof, the Universal Fire, Atziluth, etc) in which the Sephira Kether exists to the real mundane world which borders the Sephira Malkuth. Its function is to channel and modulate the emanations of the Creative Power through the various Sephira and their interconnexions before taking effect on the mundane. The nature of the individual Sephira makes them respond, slightly, to appropriate philosophical stimuli to produce changes in reality: Magia.
The Sephirot are far more complex than the simple forms of magia listed below show; these are only the general classes of effect achieved by mundane ritual.
To practice Magia a character must first take an Aspect in the supernatural, forging a deep personal link to the underlying forces of creation. For Philosophers this Aspect will generally be in a Sephira, which they wish to manipulate. It could be other things for the country practice of the hedge witch, cunning man, or the native witch doctor’s voodoo, but these would be primitive, clouded visions compared withe the enlighted Truth of modern Philosophy.
The Philosopher can then shape and shade the sephira’s effects upon the World through practical Skills. The Skills are in the appropriate Ritual and Knowledge of the various Sephirot. Each one can be invoked and modulated through appropriate Ritual to display certain kinds of effects, the ‘paths’ listed above. One sephira cannot be manipulated by the rituals of another, though there is some overlap in function when similar effects can be achieved in different ways through different Sephira.
[More detail of specific rituals’ effects is in a Philopsophers’ Eyes Only player hand-out]
An aside.
The enlightenment’s style of Magia is shaped by the roots in hermeticism, kabbalism, alchemy and mathematics. Kicked off by the syncretic breakthrough in the sixteenth century of Dee’s reading, during his sojourn in the Holy Roman empire, of the original writings of the Rabbi Loew, through the Rosicrusian experiment and its rapid collapse into the phanatiques and sects of the first half of the seventeenth century, to the emergence of rational philosophy at the end of the age and the dawn of Enlightenment in the eighteenth.
So Magia is a thing of carefully drawn circles, magical writings, symbolic representation, correspondences, components and long formal ritual. Generally speaking, a ritual takes hours to perform, for an effect which lasts moments. It tends, therefore, to be used to make ‘charms’ (as a generic term) which hold that effect for a period until it is needed. Where in darker ages, or on darker continents, a charm might be some mess of feathers and … less savoury products of a chicken, the style of the age is literate so charms tend to be inscribed texts – albeit mystical texts in secret alphabets – tightly folded and worn under the wig, over the heart, or in a phylactory, or a locket, &c, though the traditional wands, cups, rings and swords may be exhibited where symbolically appropriate.
At almost every plinth, statue, and dry fountain, the Scholar-Soldier paused to affix a paper strip or scroll, pulled from her bulging satchel. Some she weighted down with rocks. Others she tucked into crevices in the stonework. When they arrived back at the steps leading down to the great square, she unrolled a long thin paper streamer, written over with obscure characters, and fixed it from top to bottom of the stairs.
[…]
Scaris said, “I would have thought a Scholar with her own memory-palace would have little use for written records.”
“The papers? See you, they’re not for me to read. They’re for others. Other … readers. They’re warnings.”
[Beggars in Satin, by Mary Gentle]
Though it is not illegal to practice Philosophy since the Witchcraft Act of 1735, which made the pretence illegal instead, the London Mob are prone to take the flamboyant display of Magia ill, even while as individuals they have their fortunes told and buy charms for luck.
People WILL notice if you spend a lot of time chanting in your lodgings. There WILL be consequences. They WILL (probably) render your character unplayable, because you need to be very philosophical indeed, preferably Stoic, to ignore being torn limb from limb.
A more day-to-day Problem is the Matter of Interruptions and the Business of Living. Any long-running or complex Ritual runs the Risk of chance Interruption, perhaps by a Person from Porlock.
One answer is to take an Aspect to deal with the problem – either a specific place of Residence, or better still an Aspect level (representing the various protections, mundane and otherwise) in a Place of Art, Labouritorium, or Sanctum. This will be home ground, favourably prepared for performing rituals, unlikely to be interfered with by chance and have protections against assault.