Talk, dig, sneak, think, plan
While engaging with a story through just RPing and rolling has a lot of freedom, it can also come with some problems. You can be unsure what to do next, it can be hard for an emote to capture the details of what you’re attempting that don’t translate well to visual actions, it can feel like you’re just reacting to what the GM throws at you with little agency, and it can make it feel like there’s no real strategy or thought behind actions, just letting the dice decide for you.
The action system introduces five types of command, persuade, investigate, infiltrate, prepare and reason.
How an action plays out
Persuade, investigate and infiltrate all follow the same steps:
- Name a target and a goal. Who are you working on, or what are you after?
- Pick a method. Methods that can’t work here are greyed out, and the menu tells you why.
- Bring things to bear. An ability, your name or sect, something you carry, a clue you know, something you found out, something you prepared, or facts about the world or the current situation that help.
- Write your approach. This is an emote that everyone present sees, and it matters most of all.
- Roll. Two twelve-sided dice plus your bonus, against a target number (DC).
Your stats count a little, but what you choose to do counts for far more. The game reads what you wrote, picks the stats that fit what you’re actually doing, and judges how well your approach and your supports land.
Others see you working
While you’re mid-action, the room sees “Bob is persuading…” the way they’d see someone typing, and an adventure’s GM waits for you to finish.
Persuade
Talk any NPC into something: open a door, share a secret, look the other way, or back down from a fight.
persuade Bao Lin logic to show me the ledger
persuade the guard logic to let me through the gate
persuade Mei flirt about the missing ledger
You choose one of six methods: logic, flattery, threaten, flirt, bribe or command, and each plays differently.
Persuade works in town, in formal audiences, in activities, in adventures (even with characters the story has only put in front of you by name), and in the middle of a fight. In a fight you can try to make an enemy waver, talk them out of the fight, or turn them to your side.
Investigate
The world remembers what happens in public, and investigate lets you dig it back up.
investigate who has been meeting the clerk here
investigate track whoever carried the ledger off
investigate research the fire at the old granary
search for loose boards near the hearth
| Method | What it does |
|---|---|
| Casual Search | Look around without disturbing anything |
| Violent Search | Tear the place apart. Fast, but loud, and a bad miss can ruin the find or start a fight |
| Forensics | Read marks and stains for what happened here |
| Tracking | Who came and went in the last two days, and which way they left |
| Insight | Read one person: where they stand with you and whether they know more. They notice you doing it |
| Observing | Watch who keeps to a place and what’s been said there in public |
| Research | Search the records. Needs a library or archive |
| Animal Companion | Your companion’s nose, eyes or small body |
In a fight
Investigate also works mid-fight. Spend your action looking for a beam to drop, a slope to bring down, or the powder horn on a bandit’s belt. Find one and it becomes a one-use option on the Tactic menu that anyone on your side can set off.
Infiltrate
Locked homes, an embassy’s private floors, a school’s inner halls, even a palace strongroom: infiltrate is how you get somewhere you aren’t meant to be.
infiltrate north
infiltrate pick the study
infiltrate bluff up
There are six ways in, and each fails in its own way:
- Rooftops work outdoors only. A bad fall is loud.
- Disguise means nobody marks you as an intruder. A bad miss means you’re recognised.
- Lockpicking needs a lock. A bad miss snaps your pick.
- Force is easy, but everyone hears and you get half the time inside.
- Bluff the guard, and if it goes badly they remember your face for three days.
- Subdue the guard, and if it goes badly you’re in a fight.
You can also use infiltrate outside of adventures to get into locked locations on the grid.
Reason
Reason lets you work out a theory from what you know, in the middle of an adventure or an activity, and then act on it.
reason The steward forged the ledger
You cite between one and six grounds: things the story has shown you, clues, findings, lore, or knowledge you prepared. Then you state your idea. The game checks each ground and tells you whether it holds up, misses the point, or is unproven. If nothing you cited supports the idea, it’s a guess and you let it go.
Prepare
The best fights are the ones you set up in advance. Prepare lets you make something ready now and spend it later.
prepare a tripwire across the stair
prepare list
| Kind | Examples |
|---|---|
| This place | A trap, a false trail, ground to fight or hide in |
| An item | A poisoned dart, a grapple hook (costs silver) |
| A technique | One or two of your stance’s abilities worked into a single move |
| Knowledge | Research in a library or archive |
Describe what you’re making and how. If it isn’t plausible where you are, you’re told so and lose nothing. Otherwise you do the work and roll, and a better plan earns a better result: serviceable, good or excellent. A failed roll leaves you with nothing to show for the time.
Weaving actions together
The output of one action can feed into the input of another, or into a dice roll required to do something. You could persuade someone to agree to help you, use that fact to make it easier for you to search an area, use what you found in that area to prepare something, and then use that thing you prepared to help on a roll. Or any other type of combination.
Costs
Using actions costs energy: each one costs 0 energy the first time you use it in an adventure or activity, then +1 for each subsequent use of that type. Outside of adventures and activities the count carries on and halves each day. Using abilities on rolls also costs a little energy but you can never be double charged. So if you do one action into another you’ll only be charged once, or if you use an action into a roll.
Action Driven
Using actions can make it easier to immersively interact with the world, investigate an area to find out about what’s happened there recently, infiltrate the home of an NPC or persuade a bandit to switch sides mid battle and add real gameplay to RP driven stories that rewards proactivity and clever strategy but in a way that is always story-first.