Powers#

In this game, each player controls one of the great Powers over the course of an Epic spanning multiple seasons of conflict. Each will compete and cooperate to assemble assets, complete ambitions, and forestall their enemies.

From a bird’s eye view, the map shows the Cities and their territories, conquered and annexed by force of arms. A layer lower, Conspiracies spread influence in order to claim outposts in discontiguous territories. Lower still, Champions sneak through the cover of night, popping up wherever their ambitions take them. With luck and creativity, your group will transform this map into a hive of alliances, betrayals, heroism and treachery.

Players looking for a more complicated, detailed gameplay should play as a city, as they will need to balance economy, warfare, and diplomacy with quarrelsome neighbors. Champions are simpler and less risky, with only a single hex mattering at any given time. Conspiracies are somewhere in the middle.

Example powers from Lord of the Rings and Hobbit: Elrond and Denethor lead their respective Sovereign cities, Galadriel is probably closer to a Celestial, Saruman is an Overlord over his uruk-hai minions. The Rangers of the North are a Circle, as would be the Ents, the Witch-King leads a Cult of Nazgul, and the Dwarves trying to take back the lonely mountain are a Cause. Gandalf is the archetypical Wizard and Smaug is a clear Dragon. Aragorn is perhaps a Paragon, but you could also model him as a different face that arrives to lead the sovereign city of Gondor. Sauron himself has capabilities too broad for any of these categories.

Adversaries#

Any power run by the GM is called an Adversary. These act independently from the players but can interact with player powers in all the usual ways. The GM may add adversaries at the end of any season, to maintain tension in the campaign. They always have some sort of immunity that makes them challenging to deal with permanently.

Minor adversaries have fewer actions than player powers and major powers, and they don’t have any immunity effects, so they can be permanently taken out more easily.

Actions and Challenges:#

Phases Each Month: Planning > Resolution > Resistance > Battle
Phases Each Season: Tidings > [Month] > [Month] > Cleanup

Powers primarily influence the world through their Actions, of which they take a certain number each month. All actions are marked with the *️⃣symbol.

Each type of Power comes with a unique collection of basic actions, but you can propose your own at any time. Much of the game is in proposing complicated or creative actions, finding ways to leverage disparate assets to further your goals. Communication with other players is not an action, but substantial negotiations to convince or coordinate with NPCs is an action.

Players submit their actions during the Planning Step. Actions are resolved during the resolution step in submission order (all first actions, then all second actions, and so on). When there is an important tie in the order of activations, champions go before conspiracies which go before cities; further ties are decided by GM coin flip.If a player fails to submit all actions during the Planning step, excess actions each convert into rank 2 schemes.

Prespecified actions in these rules may have a listed Difficulty, otherwise they have difficulty 0. For newly proposed actions, the GM may declare the difficulty or secretly record it. When you attempt an action with a difficulty greater than 0, it is a Challenge, and you must build a dice pool. They may also have a Cost, which you pay at the start of the action.

Whenever a power submits an action with a chance of failure, they also submit a challenge roll. They select any number of assets to use (they must be arguably relevant to the action), then roll a number of d6 equal to the sum of the ranks of those assets. Every 5 and 6 is a success. For every 3 and 4, they may choose to take it as a success, but doing so incurs one consequence. If the successes match or exceed the difficulty, the power succeeds in the challenge.

You work with the GM to determine the form the consequences take. Consequences can disrupt or damage your assets, reveal information you’d prefer to keep hidden, cost additional actions or resources, apply statuses to your armies and towns, strengthen your enemies, lessen your rewards, etc. If you are unhappy with your action after rolling, often because success would come with too many consequences, you can mark it discarded in your submission for the month, though actions and resources spent are not usually refunded.

You choose how many 3s and 4s to convert when you roll — before any secret difficulty is revealed. Most actions carry an inherent difficulty from these rules; the ones that don’t are the negotiated sort, where the GM either declares the difficulty or records it secretly. The GM reveals hidden difficulties at resolution, after your consequences are locked. In practice the most common hidden difficulty is resistance ↩️: when you act, you don’t know how strong a resistance you may need to overpower, and when you resist, you don’t know how many successes you must cut down.

When deciding whether to resist, you can see the pool of assets that was arrayed against you — but not the dice rolled or how many consequences its owner accepted. If a private action targets you and you get to resist, you learn who is acting and what the action is once it is submitted — you alone, not the table. Assets the GM has kept hidden from you stay hidden until the GM reveals them, though the total size of the dice pool always counts them (see Hidden Information: you learn the pool's size, never whether any dice are assured or critical).

Common actions with special rules include Rituals (see Magic), Duels (see Below), and Negotiations (see Below). There are also actions you can take if you control an army (see Warfare) or claim a town (see Towns). These are not meant to be exclusive: If there’s something your power would want to do within the fiction, you can work with the GM to create rules for that action.

Powers can combine their assets and resources for a shared action, though each must spend an action to do so. They roll their asset pools separately and can coordinate on how many consequences to take (though each power has final control and responsibility for consequences within their pool).

Some actions allows another power to resist, marked with this symbol: ↩️. These are still a challenge even when the difficulty is 0 or unmarked. Each power gets one reaction per month ↩️, and must use them reasonably quickly after a month’s resolution (~24 hours, though you can request an extension if needed). When resisting, you cannot use assets or assistance from other powers. To resist, roll an asset pool as if it was its own challenge, and reduce the successes of the triggering action by your number of successes.

Any action that permits resistance doesn’t grant its rewards until after the resistance step, this prevents chained actions from being disrupted by the resistance rolls of others.

Actions have a location; the hex where a power gathers their assets together to take the action. For actions that move your game pieces, such as the muster action to move armies or any action to relocate an asset, the location can either be the origin or destination point. If moving items from multiple origins to a single destination, then the destination must be the location of the action. No action moves pieces from multiple points to multiple points. Some actions, particularly rituals, allow you to affect a faraway point; the action’s location in these cases must be the origin of the effect.

Example Actions:

*️⃣♥️Negotiation: Attempt to bring an NPC, such as an adversary, rogue army, or agent around to your way of thinking or into your influence. Negotiation doesn’t apply to Player Powers themselves, but it can be used to elicit actions from their peripheral assets and contacts; in those cases, the powers may ↩️. The Cost is dependent on the amount of effort or work you are requesting. The difficulty is usually the target’s rank, but is heavily modified by the extent to which their ideals and goals align with yours.

Example: The Rangers of the North entreat Elrond, who leads a Minor City, to lend them his scouting parties to help locate some of their apparently kidnapped members. Elrond doesn’t want to risk the lives of the scouts, but is aligned with the rangers and would relent in exchange for an artifact of theirs he wishes to study. At 4 successes, the Rangers could win him over completely without the artifact, but with only 2 they could arrange the deal by handing it over. They roll 6,6,5,3,1,1. They take 1 consequence, which the GM determines is “Enemies kidnapped one of the emissaries; another power now knows you have the artifact and the location of one of your outposts”

*️⃣Duel: Attempt to defeat a specific character, such as a Champion, Agent, Army commander, or otherwise, in one on one conflict. You must declare the target’s location at the time of the attack; if you declare incorrectly, the action is lost. The target may ↩️, describing how they defend themselves; they may try to fight back on a completely different front from the duel declaration. On a success, you can kill, imprison, rob, or otherwise greatly inconvenience the target. Non-Minor Champions have an immunity ability that makes them difficult to attack directly, while this immunity applies they cannot be killed by a duel. The leaders of Cities and Conspiracies have no such protections. Difficulty: 1.

Example: Gandalf duels the Balrog of Moria, a minor adversary. Gandalf rolls 5,4,3,3,2,1, plus has two assured successes from his demonhunting blade. He knows that the balrog is likely to resist, and will probably have 5 dice for the resistance. Doing the math, he chooses to take three consequences to have a good chance of success. The GM offers: “your Wizard will fall into a vast pit and you will lose two any actions next month (2 consequences) and the party you are leading will gain “Despondent 2”, believing you dead (1 consequence).” Gandalf accepts. During resistance, the Balrog indeed chooses to resist, and knows only that Gandalf had some successes. The Balrog rolls poorly and manages just three successes, for a total difficulty of 5, less than gandalf’s 6 successes. Gandalf already knows how to bypass the balrogs immunity to physical force, so is able to defeat and destroy the balrog in this duel.

*️⃣👁️Targeted Seeking: Search in a hex and the surrounding area for hidden creatures, stealthy armies, and unseen influence. Name one particular thing you are looking for, gaining a single assured success against it. Influence is detected on one success, hidden armies on two successes, and any creatures or hidden objects are uncovered on 3 successes. Cannot be resisted.

*️⃣👁️Broad Seeking: As targeted seeking, but it covers a hex and all surrounding hexes and the difficulty to detect each category is doubled.

Assets:#

Attributes:#

• Location: The hex where the asset is currently located or garrisoned
• Mobility: If the asset is located in a particular place, how far away it can be used
• Cost: The resources expended to use the asset
• Frequency: How often the asset can be used

Types of Assets:#

You can use any number of assets on each challenge, but you can’t apply multiple assets that share a class, such as two agents or two consumables.

Actions:#

You can always spend actions as a rank 1 Assured asset for challenges. This is always on top of the action cost of a challenge.

Skills:#

An inherent capacity that a power can Always Apply, but only up to one skill per action. Skills cannot be shared. The skills are listed below. They have an associated “tag” which is used to mark some actions. An action with a skill tag cannot use other skills, and each action can only use up to one skill. When reacting to a tagged action, you generally have to use the same skill, with the exception of subtlety and vigilance; subtlety is always resisted with vigilance and vice versa.
⚔️Warfare - Raising and Training Armies. Coordinating military forces outside of battle (but not transporting armies over distance).
⚒️Industry - Building Industries and Structures, Forging Equipment
⚖️Law - Understanding and manipulating levers of state. Collecting Taxes. Arguing over legal agreements.
🦶Transport - Moving Goods, People, and Armies. Establishing trade routes.
👤 Subtlety - Acts of Stealth, Misdirection, and Sabotage.
👁️ Vigilance - Detecting Intrusion and Intrigue, resisting Subtlety.
🔮Sorcery - Weaving enchantments, Crafting magical equipment, Completing Rituals
♥️Charisma - Negotiation and Persuasion
📖Delve - Research and knowledge of history. Also dungeon exploration.
🌱Nature - Understanding and manipulating plants, animals, and weather

Note that skills are associated with powers, not individual persons. A Celestial’s City applies its skills to challenges conducted by faraway agents, even though the celestial’s personal magic isn’t directly relevant.

Agents:#

An individual with rare capabilities. Each agent acts just once per season. Agents charge a fee each time they act for a power (unless they are Loyal). Agent relations with Powers range through Hostile - Neutral - Friendly - Loyal.

Most agents have a mobility of 3.

• Rooted agents live in a particular place, only acting within their mobility range of that location.
• Follower agents are free to move as instructed by their employer. A city can use a follower as if they were based out of any of their claimed towns, a conspiracy can use them as if they were located in any influenced hexes, and champions take their followers with them as they move.

Industries:#

A collection of skilled people in a town with the infrastructure for complex work (See Towns and Features). In addition to generating wealth and resources, some can be used as assets, but not more than once per season. Anyone with a claim to a town can use its industries by paying their fees, but industries loyal to a power will refuse to act against them and will waive the fee for that power.

Armies:#

Some armies have keywords such as “Engineers” or “Arcane” that allow them to assist in challenges outside of combat. Powers that control an army can use them this way once per season. Armies without such keywords are not organized to be helpful outside of combat. Once mustered to a new hex, an army can only be used in the new hex, not elsewhere. A Personal Army (a champion's own body) cannot take profession keywords and never assists in a challenge, duels included.

Secrets:#

A vital piece of information hidden from the world. Usually very powerful but very specific. They can be shared freely and across any distance, but once shared they can never be retracted. Many secrets benefit from the element of surprise and are Assured or Critical on their first use.

Magic Items:#

Can be traded but not shared. Items are generally pretty specific, but can be used repeatedly. Items are small enough that they can be transported any distance as part of an action, but if they have a wielder, the wielder must be able to reach the location of use. Magics items can be found, repaired, or crafted.

Consumables:#

Can be traded but not shared. Consumables can only be used once. They are small enough that they can be transported any distance.

• Potions: An alchemical concoction in a tempered glass bottle: usually very powerful but specific.
• Unique materials: Mithril, Silverthorn Thistle, Pixie Dust, etc. These materials are produced by some resource extractors and are generally helpful for crafting and enchantments
• Luxuries: Wine, silk, gems, etc. These items are produced by some dedicated industries. They are useful for bribes and persuasion.
• Experience: Hard-won lessons from a battle.
• Schemes: A formless plan not yet brought to fruition. A scheme can be applied to any challenge, even if it’s hard to imagine foreseeing it.

Spells:#

Can only be used by the caster, though shared actions can of course allow the caster to support another power. They can be used repeatedly, but the mana cost must be paid each time.

Assured and Critical Assets:#

An asset that is assured doesn’t roll, instead providing that many successes automatically. An asset that is critical grants three times as many successes.

When trying to ascertain the vampiric influence in a newly acquired city, you might decide between seeking the aid of the guild of medics or an itinerant warpriest. The medics are Assured professionals at detecting disease and corruption, but the warpriest’s zeal might allow them to have a Critical contribution.

Surprise: The assets described in this document broadly represent well known resources that your adversaries are prepared for. When you acquire or design a novel asset, it benefits from the element of surprise, and is either critical or assured (your choice within reason) on its first usage. When an army with a novel ability is first used in combat, if it is effective in the context of the battle, it issues a morale check on an enemy army.

If an asset would be both assured and critical its user applies a benefit of their choice, not both.

Resources:#

Some actions come with additional costs, paid for with resources. These are not assets in and of themselves, so cannot be directly applied to challenges.

Designs and Fragments:#

The designs for an object or a broken version of an object, often a magic item. Designs and Fragments come with a specified Challenge that turns them into the full object. Fragments can be reused, Designs cannot. They are not assets for their own challenges, but they can sometimes be assets for others.

Mana:#

In order to cast a spell, you must spend the associated amount and kind of mana of the 4 elements: Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. Mages speak of other species of mana, such as Dark and Light, but few yet know how to acquire them. Mana is tempestuous and spoils quickly; you must have a special perk to be able to channel or store mana, and any mana you do store dissipates at the end of each season.

Coin:#

Little pieces of gold, silver, and copper. They are dense and easily transported and so are tracked on your power sheet, rather than the map. A single “coin” is approximately a satchel of mixed pieces, enough money to support a comfortable lifestyle for a year. Coin is used to pay for mercenaries, but can also change hands to cover fees, bribes, and the costs of many other actions.

Insights:#

Random notes, rumors, pieces of lore, and unmarked dossiers from your spies. They are not specified when received, but wait until used. You can expend an insight to ask followup questions to any piece of information that the GM provides. Several insights can be spent to complete information gathering tasks in an ambition.

Respect:#

The expectation in the minds of lesser folk that you will protect them from harm and reward their support for your actions. Respect can be spent like coin, but can’t be traded. Powers that use respect:

• Gain respect equal to their number of successes on town Build actions
• Gain respect equal to their number of successes on army Train actions

Fear:#

The expectation in the minds of lesser folk that you will punish them for acting against you or refusing your requests. Fear can be spent like coin, but can’t be traded. Powers that use fear:

• Gain fear at the end of a battle equal to the number of units they slew plus the rank of the highest ranked unit they slew.
• Gain fear equal to an agent’s rank by killing them (or destroying their feature, in the case of industries). Executing an agent in your power is a free action.

Favor:#

The support of powerful beings that can’t directly intercede in worldly affairs. You can spend a favor for game-breaking instantaneous miracles, for an infusion of 3 Light or Dark mana, or to replace an army keyword with a premium keyword on levelup.

Ambitions#

Each player power and major adversary has a collection of ambitions, historic accomplishments that drive forward your citizens, comrades, or simply yourself. Major ambitions are very complicated, taking many seasons to complete, and represent victory conditions for each chapter of the campaign. Minor ambitions are smaller goals on the path to greatness.

Ambitions are concrete and achievable. “Defend my towns” will never be complete and so is an inappropriate ambition, but “Defend my city until the horde of elven nomads is defeated”. Ambitions (great and small) come with a checklist of tasks. Tasks with ❗are central, you must pass a certain number to achieve the ambition. If it becomes impossible to complete enough of the❗tasks, or if another power completes them without substantial assistance from you, then they are considered failed. You can also abandon an ambition at any time. Some tasks are mysterious, only revealed after you complete a previous task; those are additionally marked with ❓.

Each ambition has a fame score describing how difficult and out of the way it is. An ambition to defeat a host of rampaging emus already attacking your towns is worth less than an ambition to defend a neighbor from such a host, or than an ambition to rile up a peaceful (but evil) host of emus and then defeat them. Similarly, ambitions that come with a substantial material reward also reduce their score; if your neighbors offer to pay you heaps of gold to defeat the emus, then it’s less impressive to do so. Major ambitions have a fame score between 15 and 25, while minor ambitions have a score between 5 and 10. See the next section for how to spend fame.

At the end of each season, you may select a new minor or major ambition if you are missing them. When selecting ambitions, you may either propose some (in batches of 2-3 is usually most helpful, unless there’s a single clear choice) or request options from the GM (who will provide 2-3). When requesting options, select one of the options below. Adding an ambition can often create a reward to obtain; for instance you might have never heard of the “Blade of Aaron Noda” before proposing or accepting a minor ambition “Recover the Blade of Aaron Noda”. If you create a new problem for yourself when you select or propose an ambition, you immediately get resources in compensation.

Multiple powers can take the same ambition (major or minor), but they then split the fame reward based on their relative contributions. Sometimes a player will propose a neat ambition they thought of, but don’t want to take themselves; any number of other players can claim it, though if one player is really excited about it it’s polite to let them have it.

Adversaries don’t gain fame from their ambitions. Instead, their ambitions serve to make their goals more legible and concrete.

Example Ambition Types:

Deeds: Demonstrations of your strength and capability. Reward: Respect or Fear

Grudges: Someone has wronged you and needs to pay for it. Go to their home and do violence to them. Reward: You take their most valuable resource or asset that isn’t nailed down.

Grace: Heal the sick, repair the broken, protect the defenseless. Reward: Friendship or loyalty from the creature you helped.

Mysteries: Uncover the unknown or make a paradox sensible. Reward: a powerful secret

Quests: Recover or remake an item of historical significance. Reward: a magic item

Services: Follow the commandments of the higher or lower planes. Reward: Favor

Example Ambitions:

Quell Rebellion in The Western Villages - Deed: Achieved after two ❗. Reward: 9 Fame and 7 Fear.

• Interrogate Elizabeth Caltrop, the previous rebel leader sitting in your prison
• Meet with Simon Caltrop, the rebel leader
• Discover who is financially supporting the rebellion
• ❓❗Stop the financial support going to the rebels
• ❗Remove the Rogue Army of Dwarven Rebels outside the town of Maleran
• ❗Reduce the counts of Uprising in the village of Derop to 0.

Free My Mentor From Count Caliphrase - Grace: Achieved after one❗. Reward: 7 Fame and your mentor as a Loyal Asset.

• Discover where my mentor is being held
• Sneak past that town’s Watching Walls without being detected
• ❗Delve into the Octarine Oubliette to at least the first floor, where my mentor is held
• Obtain leverage over Caliphrase
• ❗Negotiate with Caliphrase to free my mentor.

Reward: A loyal rank 2 Mentor follower.

Recover the Blade of Aaron Noda - Quest: Achieved after one❗. Reward: 5 Fame and Aaron’s Blade

• Read about the blade in the library of Windhome
• Discuss the blade with the historian Maude Steelmolde
• ❗❓Travel to the Blade’s location
• ❗Delve into the dungeon where the blade is located, to at least the second floor.
• ❗Cast Aaron’s ritual of conjuration to summon the blade. Cost: WWWWAAAAA, Difficulty 6.

Fame and Development#

At the start of each season, during Tidings, powers may spend fame on new skills, new skill ranks and new perks.

• New Skill: 2 Fame, then increase the cost of this development by 2
• +1 Skill Rank: The number of ranks you’re reaching times 2
• New Perk or upgrade this perk: 5 Fame, then increase the cost of this development by 2

[These costs are designed so that it’s very difficult to accumulate large numbers of perks or skills, but less hard to develop secondary skills after ranking up your first skill]

Powers start with different numbers of initial perks and skills; New Skill and New Perk don’t care about these initial counts.

Playtest Rules#

All game mechanics are subject to change. If a perk, asset, army, or otherwise is determined to be overpowered, it may be nerfed. The power which controls it may decide to refund the cost to obtain it, or to exchange it for a similarly costed object. Those powers receive a 1 fame tip either way, for bringing the mechanic to light.

Players may also receive small amounts of fame for assisting the GM, supporting the game, or producing creative works of epic adjacent media.

Creating a Power#

Mechanical:#

1. Create a new power sheet in the google drive for the epic, sharing it with just the GM.
2. Choose a Power class and subclass (see Cities, Conspiracies, and Champions), then add its information to your sheet, making selections of starting resources, armies, and otherwise as you go. Note that even at this stage you can propose alternatives to the examples in this document.
3. Choose whether your power uses Respect or Fear (see Resources) to exert control, and start with 3 of the chosen resources.
4. Gain a perk (see Perks, or your subclass advancement perks)
5. Describe three contacts you are friendly with in different towns on the map. They are rooted agents of ranks 1, 2, and 3. (see Assets)

Role Play:#

1. Describe your Emissaries, the mechanisms or people your power uses to communicate with others. All Powers have emissaries that can reach anywhere in the campaign map and communicate at least simple messages with anyone. Emissaries are easy to replace; killing another power’s emissary for dramatic effect is rude but not mechanically impactful.
2. Based on your power class, describe your appearance
   1. City: What do towns look like when you rule them? What does the average citizen think of their leadership? What do your lesser bureaucrats and go-betweens look like and care about? What is visiting your capitol or throneroom like?
   2. Conspiracy: What does it look like on the ground when you gain influence in an area? What does your membership and leadership look like to outsiders, and what do they call themselves?
   3. Champion: What do you look like, and are you obviously magical? What do people know about you, if anything?
3. If you would like, you may declare a face (see Faces) for any of your armies, industries, or other peripheral organizations and characters. This is the character that others RP with when they interact with them; the GM controls them during these interactions, but will follow your flavor guidance.