Conditions
Conditions are the dynamic and diverse set of disabilities, stresses and damage that can affect their physical well-being and social influence in the game world.
Conditions are divided into Standard and Custom Conditions, each with its structure for tracking severity and impact.
Stress
Standard conditions include two primary aspects that represent a character's overall state:
HEALTH: Reflects a character's physical, mental, and emotional well-being. This condition determines the character's ability to perform actions and interact effectively with the game world.
SOCIAL STATUS: Represents a character's social standing, renown, and reputation, impacting how the game world perceives and interacts with them.
Both Health and Status are tracked on a scale from 0 to 6, with each level representing an escalating severity:
MINOR (1-2): The character's stress or damage is starting to impair their performance. A minor Health condition reduces the character's physical movement by 50%. A minor Status condition reduces the dice outcome of the highest die on an action roll by 1.
MODERATE (3-5): The character's ability to perform actions is significantly impaired, imposing a disadvantage on action rolls related to the Health or Status condition of the character.
SEVERE (6): At this level, the character's Health or Status condition is considered incapacitated, and the character cannot perform related actions until the condition is treated.
Temporary Conditions
Temporary conditions are the
Custom Conditions
Custom conditions allow the game host and players to adapt the gameplay experience to specific genres, settings, or narrative themes by defining unique condition types. These conditions provide additional narrative or mechanical significance, enhancing immersion and storytelling. Custom conditions are generally rated on a simplified scale of 1 to 3:
MINOR (1): A small inconvenience or setback that may subtly impact a character's performance or actions by stepping down the dice rating for related assets or imposing specific restrictions to a character's standard turn.
MODERATE (2): A notable hindrance that affects gameplay and disadvantages relevant actions.
SEVERE (3): A serious impairment that restricts the character's choices or actions, potentially requiring immediate attention or resolution.
Examples of custom conditions include:
In a fantasy setting: Cursed or Blighted
In a horror setting: Sanity, Fear, or Paranoia.
In a science fiction setting: Radiation Poisoning, Zero-G Sickness, or Cybernetic Glitches.
Custom conditions can be used in parallel with the standard health and status conditions or as a complete replacement.
Managing Conditions
Conditions accumulate on characters due to the risk associated with performing actions during gameplay and the negative consequences of the outcome. When a character suffers a negative result, the player should increase the level of the appropriate condition based on the severity of the result.
Condition levels can be reduced through several methods, each reflecting a different approach to recovery. Players may choose from these options based on the context of the game and the resources available:
MOMENTARY REST: During turn-based play, a character can forgo an action to treat a condition. The player can utilize any relevant asset, feature, or resource depending on the condition. Unless otherwise specified by any special rules, the severity level of a condition is reduced by 1 point.
TEAMWORK: During turn-based play, an ally can use their teamwork reaction to treat another character's condition, providing immediate support and reducing the severity of a condition by 1 point per turn.
DOWNTIME: When characters have the opportunity to rest and recover during a period of Downtime, players can spend their downtime activity points to seek medical treatment, physical rehabilitation, or mental relaxation to reduce the level of their conditions.
Character Death
Character death in the game is always a player's choice and a risk they must be willing to take. Anytime a player chooses to push a character past their normal limits, they can choose to perform a Heroic action.
A heroic action allows a player to ignore being incapacitated for a turn. It represents the gritty determination to push past a character's limits in a desperate life-or-death grab for glory. If the action roll is successful (complete or primarily successful), any negative consequences are ignored, and the character survives. If the action roll is a failure (complete or mostly failure), the character is dead. The player can narrate their character's death and proceed to design a replacement character.
No limits (other than death) exist on when or how often a player can choose to perform a Heroic Action to overcome being incapacitated.
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