Adventure Scenes

Time spent exploring an adventure site is measured in scene. Each scene represents the amount of time it takes to carefully go through a few rooms, thoroughly pick over a single room, or perform similarly long actions. An hour contains about 6 scenes.

  1. Party declares their actions.
  2. Referee describes what happens.
  3. 1 player rolls the Site Die and referee decrements Site Clock by that amount. When it goes below zero, a random encounter occurs.

Adventure Actions

The party declares actions to take and they are resolved. Moving quickly through a site is risky but can be more or less safely done if there is a clear, known path back out. What counts as a full scene includes

  • Exploring a new room
  • Traveling through a long corridor
  • Moving quickly through 3 previously explored rooms
  • Listening at the door
  • Searching for something
  • Picking a lock
  • Disarming a trap
  • Resting
  • Maintaining a light source

Adventure Event Check

When entering an adventure site, the referee establishes a site clock which is set to 20. At the end of the procedure, someone rolls a die and the referee subtracts that amount from the clock.

  • If the clock drops below zero, the party has an encounter.
  • If the clock reaches 3, the party spots a clue or omen to the upcoming encounter first.
  • If the clock reaches exactly zero, it resets to 3 (triggering the clue/omen result, if it hasn’t already been triggered).

The site’s die size starts at d6. If the party rests, the die size increases to a maximum of d12.

Encounters are d4 rounds away, unless the distance is clear from the fiction.

Exploration Watches

Time spent traversing and exploring the overworld is measured in watches. Each watch represents the amount of time it takes to travel leagues, explore acres, cook an elaborate meal, hunt or forage for food, harvest monster parts, or perform similar activities. A day contains 3 watches, representing day, evening, and night.

  1. Party selects wilderness actions (traveling, supplying, exploring, resting, etc.)
  2. Referee describes what happens.
  3. Referee rolls the Wilderness Event die.

Exploration Actions

The party declares actions to take and they are resolved. These actions include but are not limited to

  • Traveling. Penalties such as Fatigue or additional time spent, or bonuses such as quicker speed can be applied or negated based on access to paved roads, mounts, guides, compasses, maps, terrain, darkness, or weather conditions. Sometimes a navigation test is necessary.
  • Exploring. Party members may search for hidden features, scout ahead, or keep watch.
  • Hunting, fishing, foraging, and resupplying (when in small villages or farmland). Yield for an item starts at 1d4 and increments up the dice chain to a d12 depending on advantages and disadvantages.
  • Making camp and resting. All fatigue is removed when resting. Rations and meals are not marked off while making camp in order to reduce tracking. Food is instead used for healing.

Since there are 3 watches per day, the last watch of the day is usually spent making camp and resting while the first and second can be used for travel or exploration.

Not resting for a watch in a day results in a party member becoming Deprived and adding a Fatigue to their burden.

Exploration Event Check

The referee rolls 1d6. On a 4-6, nothing happens. On a 1-3:

  1. A random encounter d4 rounds away.
  2. A threat to the party’s resources.
  3. Change in weather.

Downtime Cycles

Time spent doing downtime activities is measured in cycles. Each cycle represents the amount of time it takes to convalesce, do research, brew potions, train an animal, train in combat, make connections, or perform other long-term activities. A season contains about 6 cycles.

  1. Party declares their actions.
  2. The referee describes the outcome.
  3. The party resupplies, including recruiting hirelings, buying pets or mounts, and looking for rumors.
  4. Referee rolls the Downtime Event die.

Downtime Actions

Downtime actions are any major actions that an adventurer may undertake to improve themselves, learn more about the world or a situation, influence the world, or other similar major goals.

Downtime actions do not include small things like resupplying, attending parties, visiting friends, carousing, throwing parties, or attending funerals for fallen party members.

Downtime actions cannot

  • endanger the player character
  • be done in unsafe conditions
  • be done while a player character is trying to recover Attribute Scores

Tracked Actions

Some actions may require a tracker to achieve a long term goal such as training a skill. The referee will create a tracker and offer a cost. The tracker may have 1-5 milestones to achieve the goal. Examples of costs include:

  • Silver: Direct payment of silver from a character’s inventory.
  • Resources: Non-monetary costs such as material goods, specific common items, and so on.
  • Reputation: Betting on a character’s renown, personality, presence, social connections, etc.
  • Loss: Offering something specific and unique. A finger, a soul, a Relic, etc.

Some costs can be reduced or disregarded through character skills, connections, or force of will. For example, an adventurer may have already acquired the necessary reputation to gain access to a renowned institution, and thus the cost is abated. On the other hand, another character may not be so lucky, and must rely on their force of personality instead. In this case, the referee should state the risk (a permanent ban on entry, a loss of reputation, etc.). The adventurer then makes a WIL save; on a success the cost is either reduced or eliminated entirely.

Such tracked actions could include

  • Training a skill
  • Taming or training an animal
  • Researching a location, item, monster, or person
  • Crafting
  • Making connections with factions or powerful people
  • Hunting down a specific rare item
  • Establishing an institution like a fast food shop or a university (refer to Building an Institution)

Resupply

The party should do any resupply and bookkeeping quickly and present their actions to the referee as a group. This may also include hiring retainers or hirelings, or looking for any rumors.

Downtime Event Check

At the end of the cycle, the referee will roll the Downtime Event die to determine time advancement, faction advancement, world events, and other events.

The referee then performs restocking procedures for explored dungeons.

Negotiation

From Traverse Fantasy’s interpretation of Draw Steel.

When negotiating with NPCs who are not immediately hostile or amenable, use the negotiation procedure.

  1. Determine what the PCs are trying to get the NPC to do.
  2. Determine the NPC’s disposition to this idea by combining points of agreement and contention based on their values, goals, and beliefs. Each point of agreement is +1; each point of contention is -1.
  3. Determine the NPC’s patience ranging from 1 to 3, with 1 for especially impatient, stressed, or disagreeable NPCs and 3 for exceedingly patient, unstressed, or friendly NPCs.
  4. The PC makes a WIL save with every attempt to negotiate.
    1. On a 1, disposition increases by 1.
    2. On a success, disposition increases by 1 and patience decreases by 1.
    3. On a failure, patiences decreases by 1.
  5. At ±3 disposition or 0 patience, the conversation ends and disposition is final.

The value of the disposition at the end of negotiation indicates how much the NPC is willing to sacrifice to the PCs’ aims:

  • 1 = nothing;
  • 2 = minor sacrifice;
  • 3 = major sacrifice.

End-of-Session Escape Procedure

From DON’T SPLIT THE SESSION: Rule 0 For Avoiding A Play-Killing Mistake In Modern Lives

When a session would end before a big fight or horrible situation without the ability of the PCs to escape the adventure site in time before the session ends, the referee presents all of the stakes of the situation to the players. The stakes can include “PC suffering horrible wound”, “Monster slain”, “Treasure retrieved”, “NPC rescued.”

These stakes are sorted into a three-column table (with our examples from above):

Will Happen 3-in-6 chance Will Not Happen
  PC suffering horrible wound  
  Monster slain  
  Treasure retrieved  
  NPC rescued  

Each player gets a turn to move a stake into a column and another stake into an opposite column. In our example, the first player may move “PC suffering horrible wound” into the “Will Not Happen” column and move “Monster slain” into the “Will Happen” column.

If any options remain in the middle column, a d6 is rolled to see if they happen. The session subsequently wraps and ends back in safety.