Helping

You can help another character with a test if you have a Being trait that applies to whatever the test is meant to accomplish. Describe how the trait contributes, then instead of making a test yourself, hand the die to the player whose character is leading the test.

You can contribute only one die to a test you're helping with. The leading character can contribute as many dice as they can get away with, as usual. Multiple characters can help on the same test if you can convince the GM that it's feasible, with each helper invoking a single Being trait and contributing a single die.

The leading character chooses which die to use for the test's result. When a test that you helped with incurs fallout, you share in its consequences.

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Performing a Setup

When you set up another character, you make your own test rather than contributing dice to theirs. Describe how you're setting them up, gather your dice, and roll; on any success, they receive an edge, usually representing a situational advantage. The edge's Being symbol will usually match one of the Being symbols you used on the test, though ultimately it's the GM's call.

When performing a setup, your test yields edge and incurs fallout in the usual fashion. It's totally possible to gain an edge on the same setup roll that granted one – or even to gain an edge of your own on a failed setup roll, if that's how the dice fall!

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Edges

An edge is a temporary advantage that you receive when you pick a result that rolled doubles on a test. You have to actually pick the number that rolled doubles in order to receive the edge – just having doubles showing on your roll isn't enough. You can also be granted an edge by another character's successful setup – see Cooperative Tests for more information.

An edge takes the form of a temporary Being trait that you sketch into the “Having” section of your character sheet. The GM determines what symbol you get; they might pick one based on the situation, or roll for one and let the dice land where they may. The GM assigns the edge's symbol, but it's up to you, the player, to interpret it. An edge can be taken to represent a situational advantage, a tool or weapon that you found, or whatever else seems appropriate.

Once you have an edge, it works like a regular Being trait, and can be tapped for dice on tests. It can also be sacrificed to offset fallout like a regular Being symbol – in fact, if you tap an edge for dice and the test incurs minor fallout, the edge is automatically sacrificed. (You can still voluntarily sacrifice it to offset fallout on tests where you didn't use it, if it makes sense to do so.) See Unbeing and Undoing for more details.

How long an edge sticks around depends on its nature. A situational advantage goes away when the situation changes, while a tool or weapon is usually available until it breaks or you run out of ammo, both of which can be good justifications for sacrificing it to offset fallout. You can transfer an edge to another character if it's the sort of thing that can be given away.

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Fallout

Fallout is edge's evil cousin. Whenever you incur fallout on a test, the GM will roll on a special table to determine what goes wrong. For minor fallout, the GM will roll one die, while major fallout rolls two dice and combines the results – and heaven help you if the GM rolls doubles.

The GM may prepare a special fallout table whose symbols represent the hazards of the current scenario. Otherwise, you can use the following generic table. Its symbols can apply to most situations.

Random Fallout

d6	Icon	Description
1		Broken heart
2		Explosion
3		Human figure falling
4		Skull and crossbones
5		Stopwatch
6		Triangular sign with exclamation point

By itself, fallout has no special rules-based effects. The GM simply interprets the rolled symbols to determine what complications or setbacks result from your test. A more complete discussion of fallout is found under Difficulty and Fallout.

You can offset fallout by suffering voluntary “damage” to your traits. You can wait until after the GM has rolled for fallout symbols before deciding to do so, but you have to make the call before they describe the results. Refer to Unbeing and Undoing for more information.

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Edge and Fallout on Cooperative Tests

When you help with a test, only the character leading the test can receive an edge, though they're free to immediately give it away to one of their helpers if they wish. Fallout, conversely, strikes every contributor in a cooperative test. However, only one contributing character needs to incur Unbeing or Undoing to offset the fallout for everyone involved.

When you make a test to set up another character, the edge and fallout from that test are your own.

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Unbeing

Unbeing offsets minor fallout. After seeing the result of the fallout roll, but before the GM describes what happens, you can voluntarily suffer a point of Unbeing to cancel the fallout. Mark a small X beside one of your Being traits; until it's recovered, you can't invoke that Being trait for dice on test. You can also sacrifice an edge for the same effect. Sacrificed edges are gone for good – cross them right off your character sheet. This is mandatory if you incur minor fallout on a test where you tapped an edge. If you tapped multiple edges on the same test, you can choose which one is sacrificed.

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Undoing

Undoing offsets major fallout. Major fallout can't be offset with Unbeing, not even one die at a time. In order to offset major fallout, you need to suffer Undoing. This works in much the same way: after seeing the results of the fallout roll, but before the GM interprets them, you can mark off one of your Doing traits in lieu of suffering the fallout. Whatever you could do by virtue of that trait, now you can't – not until it recovers.

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Recovery

Unbeing marks go away whenever you have a chance to rest and catch your breath for a few minutes. Undoing is more serious, and requires special measures to recover, depending on what your character's Doing traits represent: overnight rest, a few hours of access to a machine shop, etc. If all else fails, your Undoing marks are cleared at the end of the session.

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External Doing Traits

In some genres, a character's Doing traits might represent something external to the character. For example, in a game about giant robot pilots, each player character's Doing traits could represent systems or features of their respective giant robots. Players would only have access to their characters' Doing traits when piloting their robots.

When Doing traits represent an external entity, marking off all of its Doing traits due to Undoing results in loss of access to that entity until at least one Doing trait is restored. To continue the above example, when all of a giant robot pilot's Doing traits are marked off, their giant robot breaks down or blows up, and can't be used again until it's repaired.

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Limited Unbeing Recovery

In games where offsetting fallout ought to be a bigger deal, a limit can be imposed on recovering Being traits marked off due to Unbeing.

Under this variant, each player character receives a store of Renewing points; five is a good number if opportunities to restore them are likely to be frequent, while ten is is better if they'll need to last the whole session. Renewing points can be spent one-for-one to recover marked Being traits whenever the character has a chance to catch their breath.

Any circumstance that would permit the recovery of Undoing also restores Renewing to its initial value. As noted above, the rarity of such opportunities should be considered when deciding on the initial number of Renewing points to grant.

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Progress and Disaster Tracks

By default, tests are a one-and-done affair: the player rolls the dice, and if they choose a successful result, their character does the thing. Progress and disaster tracks model situations where it's more complicated than that.

A progress track is a set of boxes, typically three to five, that represent progress toward a complex or challenging goal. Every time a player makes a successful test toward that goal, check off a box. A box is checked even if the successful test incurs minor or major fallout; you can make progress toward a goal while causing some unrelated catastrophe in the process!

In order to avoid having a progress track turn into an exercise in repetetive dice rolling, the exact same combination of Being traits can't be used on multiple tests toward a given goal. The same individual Being trait can be used multiple times as long as it's in a different combination each time. Players will have to mix up their approaches to reach the finish line.

A disaster track is the opposite of a progress track, marking boxes on failures rather than successes. A disaster track can be used to represent scenarios where no individual goal warrants detailed tracking, but the overall situation is precarious. As with progress tracks, a failure that incurs no fallout still marks a disaster track; any fallout incurred while a disaster track is in play should be interpreted as additional problems to get distracted by, not a worsening of the one the track represents.

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Assessing Fallout

The other dimension of a goal's difficulty is the severity of the fallout that any tests made toward it may incur.

In most situations, fallout is self-scaling: problems introduced by minor fallout should be less bad than whatever problem the acting player was trying to solve, while major fallout can be treated either as multiple minor-scale problems, or – particularly in the case of rolling doubles on the fallout table – as a single new problem that's about equally bad.

Since fallout can be incurred on both successes and failures, care should be taken not to use fallout simply to reverse the effects of a success. A success with major fallout isn't “you tried to solve that problem and just made it worse”; it's “you solved that problem and created a new, different problem in the process”. Fallout on a failure, conversely, can absolutely make the problem the player was trying to solve worse.

Individual fallout symbols have no specific rules-based effects attached, and are left to the GM's interpretation. is a collaborative game, so don't be afraid to ask the acting player what they think their test's fallout symbol means, or to open it up to the table for a quick brainstorm.

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Special Challenges

If a player wants their character to try something absurdly out of their league – like punching out a god, or maybe just Godzilla – you can decide that the test is epic. The player should be informed of this fact before rolling, and given the opportunity to change their mind.

When making an epic test, the acting character suffers a point of Unbeing before rolling. The player chooses which Being trait to mark off, as usual. The trait is marked off before gathering dice, which will affect which traits are available for the test.

In some cases, having a relevant Doing trait may reduce an epic test to a normal test for that character. In other cases, a relevant Doing trait will be required just to try it!

Future revisions of this document will provide other varieties of special challenge rules.

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NPCs and Unbeing

An NPC that's really determined to be a pain in the player characters' collective butt can force the issue by suffering Unbeing. Any time a player rolls a success to overcome an opposing NPC, the GM can mark off one of that NPC's Being traits to shrug off the success. The GM chooses which trait to mark off, not the rolling player.

The marked trait is no longer available to the NPC, which will affect their ability to engage in further opposition – if their only relevant trait is marked off, they effectively don't have one! An NPC whose final Being trait becomes marked is removed from play.

When dealing with NPCs that have traits, this rule replaces any general rules regarding the need for multiple successes to achieve an objective – see Difficulty and Fallout for more details.

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Mobs and Giant Monsters

An NPC that represents a large mob of characters, a giant monster, or some other large-scale threat can be assigned multiple copies of the same Being trait. This doesn't affect individual tests against them, but each copy of the trait can be marked off separately, obliging the player characters to rack up more successes in order to deal with them.

In general, a single NPC should rarely have more than five Being traits, including any duplicates.

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Abstract and Inanimate NPCs

Inanmate or abstract elements of a given encounter – ranging from objects and geographic features to narrative tropes – can be modelled as NPCs using these rules. This is appropriate when you want to encourage the players to engage with the obstacle in question as something with agency that's actively out to get them; more impersonal threats are usually better handled using progress or disaster tracks.

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NPCs as Special Challenges

An NPC can be designated a special challenge, applying the relevant challenge rules to tests against that NPC. Depending on the NPC, this may apply to only some tests against them; for example, a big dumb monster might be an epic challenge in a physical fight, but not if the player characters try to trick or fast-talk it instead.

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Random NPCs

NPCs' traits can be randomly generated in the same way as a player character's traits, by rolling on the tables in the relevant appendices. If random scenarios are in play, there are special rules regaring an NPC's first Being trait – refer to that section for details.

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Filling in the Details

Once the scenario's Factors have been chosen, players take turns making one of the following choices, starting with the GM. Apart from the GM going first, you can contribute in any order you like, but nobody should make a second contribution until every group member has made at least one.

• If a Factor has an attached empty circle (the ones marked “B” in the diagram), roll once on the Being tables in Appendix 1: Being Symbols, and draw the resulting symbol on the worksheet. You can decide which circle to draw the symbol in after seeing what you rolled, as long as it's an empty circle attached to a Factor. After adding the symbol, write down one fact about the Factor that relates to the symbol you just added.
• If there's an empty circle connecting two Factors (the ones marked “D” in the diagram) and both Factors have at least one attached Being symbol, roll once on the Doing table in Appendix 2: Doing Symbols, and draw the resulting symbol on the worksheet. As above, you can wait until after you've seen the result of your roll before choosing a circle of the appropriate type. After adding the symbol, write down one fact about the relationship between the two connected Factors that relates to the symbol you just added.
• If a filled circle connecting two factors currently has only one associated fact, write down a second fact about the relatonship between the two connected Factors that relates to the symbol in that circle. This fact should adopt the opposite perspective of the first fact; i.e., if the first fact talks about how Factor A relates to Factor B, the new fact should talk about how factor B relates to Factor A. This choice does not involve making a roll.

Facts should be kept brief at this stage – no more than 8–10 words apiece. The particulars will be fleshed out during play. Opening facts up to a group brainstorm is both allowed or encouraged, though the player taking the current turn has final say in the event of disagreement.

When you're finished, every circle marked “B” or “D” in the diagram should be filled in, and you should have twelve facts written down: two about each Factor, and two about the relationship between each pair of Factors.

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Inciting Incident

Finally, roll once on the Fallout table, and draw the resulting symbol in the central circle on the worksheet (the one marked “X” in the diagram). This represents the crisis, opportunity, or inciting incident that motivates the player characters to stick their noses into the scenario's business. As a group, brainstorm what that incident might be.

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For Solo Prep

The random scenario creation tools can also be used solo, either to aid the GM in scenario preparation, or as a standalone minigame. These guidelines can be used largely as written – apart from the fact that a single person is taking every turn, of course!

When running through the process by yourself, you won't have the benefit of a group brainstorm to help reconcile any strange contradictions that arise from filling in a Factor's second Being slot after its relationships with adjacent Factors have already been defined, so it's recommended that you fill in all of the Being slots before tackling any of the Doing slots.

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With Other Random Elements

If you have a Random Scenario Worksheet filled out, randomly generated NPCs and other elements work a little differently. For the first Being trait for each randomly generated entity, rather than rolling in Appendix 1, roll a single die and refer to the numbers printed around the outside of the Random Scenario Worksheet. This will determine which Factor the entity is linked to, as well as providing its initial Being trait. Any subsequent Being traits. should be rolled in the usual fashion.

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