For Storytellers#
I always know how the story ends. Then the party walks in, and I find out I was wrong.
What this page is for
Every part of this book leaves notes in boxes like the ones below for whoever runs the game: seeds for a story, rulings to make before the campaign starts, and ways to pace it. This page gathers all 77 of them by section, each with a link back to where it sits, puts every roller in the book in one place, and rolls up anyone the party meets.
Tools#
The rollers run in the page, so keep a tab open on the ones your table uses most.
At the table#
Encounter roller
What the party meets, on any ground and at any level.
Weather roller
A day of weather on any ground, and what it does to travelers.
Site finder
Places to take a party of a given level.
Blow roller
Roll a blow, or see the odds of one landing.
Loot roller
What a fallen foe leaves behind.
Meal roller
What an inn serves tonight, and what it costs.
Meet someone
Anyone the party meets: their people, work, manner, and now and then a secret.
Name roller
A name for anyone the party meets, by race.
Place-name roller
A name for a farm, a hill or a ruin, in the words of its country.
Upbringing roller
Someone's family station, and what they grew up around.
Material lookup
What any material is worth and what it makes.
Making a character#
Race finder
The races that suit a class.
Class finder
The classes that suit a race.
Province finder
The provinces that welcome a race.
Guild finder
The tradesguilds that suit a class.
Rode finder
The rodes that suit a class.
Level planner
A character from level 1 to 100, point by point.
Meet someone#
When the party talks to someone you hadn’t planned for, roll them up. Pick the province and the roller picks their people by who actually lives there, their work, and whatever else marks them out, at the odds the game’s own simulated townsfolk are born with. Most people have three or four things worth saying about them, and about one in sixteen has something worth hiding.
Give them a name from Names, and one thing they want from the party.
Left out
The game’s people carry a few more traits than these: who they’re drawn to, how they love, and some illnesses of the body and mind. They shape the simulation’s histories, but they’re yours to give a character on purpose, not something to roll on a stranger.
Building a fight#
Size up a whole fight the way a character sizes up one creature (Sizing one up). Treat the foes as one creature: add up their health and take the highest level among them. Treat the party as one character: add up their health and take their average level. Work out the difficulty from those, and read the verdict.
- A fight on the way
- A fair fight or an even match. It costs the party something without stopping them.
- The fight the session is about
- A challenge. Somebody should end it low, and a bad round should feel like one.
- Something to run from
- Dangerous or worse. Only when the party can see it coming and has somewhere to go.
Four level 1 characters have 400 health between them. Four level 3 collectors have 12 each, 48 in all. That’s 2 for each of the 2 levels between them, and 5 times 48 over 400 less 1, which comes to -0.4: an even match. Put a level 5 sergeant with 19 health in charge of them and it comes to 3.8: a challenge.
Numbers aren’t the whole fight
A foe that heals itself, fights from a ledge or knows the party is coming is worth more than its numbers say. So is a party that’s tired, hungry or down a priest. Size it, then trust your eye.
Before the first session#
Spend the first half hour of a campaign agreeing on the things the rules leave to the table. It saves arguments later, and it tells the players what kind of story they’ve sat down to.
- How dark, how funny
- Sedia does both. Say which you mean to lean on, and ask whether anyone has something they'd rather not see at the table at all.
- How hard death is
- How easy a priest is to find decides how bold the party will be (Defeat & Death).
- Money and shopping
- Whether the characters start with money, and whether buying is open or limited (Items).
- Experience or milestones
- Count it, or give a level when something that matters is done (Levels).
- Why they're together
- Give the characters a reason to know each other before the first scene. The ready-made characters each carry a rumor that ties them to Tharsis.
- Missing players
- Decide what happens to a character whose player can't come: they stay behind, they come along quietly, or someone else plays them for the night.
Running the game#
For a first session, Last Orders at Matt’s Grill is a mystery ready to run in one evening, with the ready-made characters already written into it. Common Folk has numbers for the bakers, guards and card sharps the party meets along the way. Running a Fight is the storyteller’s half of combat: a creature’s numbers, sizing one up, how creatures fight, the words for a blow and making rulings when the rules run out. Some Adventure Sites entries say what’s waiting at a site and who’s behind it, so read a site before your players do. Levels has the experience rules, and the note on leveling by milestone below if you’d rather not count.
Notes by section#
Make a character#
Getting Started: Ask your storyteller
Two things here are up to the storyteller, not the rules: whether you start with any money, and which purchasing scheme the table uses.
Races: Hooks, not races
None of these can be played, and whether any of them is true is up to you. Any one of them is a campaign if a player goes looking.
On Races
Races: Coming back
Whether a character who has turned into another archetype can ever go back, and what it costs them, is your call. Make it cost something.
On Races
Elf: A seed planted
An elf asks the party to carry something to Darkwood and won’t say what it is. It has been on the road for three generations of couriers, and the party is the latest.
On Elf
Pixie: Slightly wrong
Every lock in a merchant’s house opens backwards and his bread won’t rise. He swears he never insulted a pixie, and he’s lying about something.
On Pixie
Sprite: Heard it from a sprite
A sprite says he overheard a murder being planned, and nobody believes him but the party. He won’t say where he was at the time.
On Sprite
Dwarf: The missing deed
A dwarf family’s name records a deed nobody in the family can do anymore, and the clan elders have noticed. Someone has to help them do it again before the next feast, or find out whether the founder ever did it at all.
On Dwarf
Orc: The Legion’s price
Mandak’s Legion is paying by the head for orcs out of the Bleak, and an orc warband is paying more for the Legion’s. The party gets both offers on the same day.
On Orc
Gnome: Someone still in the mines
A free gnome hires the party to get a sister out of a Jewall mine. The dwarves who hold her contract aren’t villains in their own eyes, and Jewall’s law is on their side.
On Gnome
Goblin: Feast or famine
The goblin quarter of Narsis is one bad harvest from starving, and its warbands are already working out whose granary is nearest. The party can feed them, stop them or profit from it.
On Goblin
Kobold: Something sang back
The kobolds of Narsis are leaving in a hurry for a cave in the Bleak, sure their dragon has woken. They might be right.
On Kobold
Troll: Taken in
A troll tribe passing through Narsis decides one of the party is family, which comes with a mother’s name, a hundred cousins and every one of the tribe’s feuds.
On Troll
Human: The newest quarter
A human quarter is growing inside a city that isn’t theirs, and the older residents want the charter changed before humans outnumber them. Both sides are hiring.
On Human
Half-Elf: The ears under the hood
Someone in Tharsis is quietly paying to learn which of the city’s officials are half-elves. A half-elf in the party, or one they know, is on the list.
On Half-Elf
Half-Orc: Both sides of the raid
An orc warband raids a human village where a half-orc in the party, or one they owe, has family on both sides.
On Half-Orc
Halfling: A run of luck
A halfling in town has won every game of chance for a month, and the house wants to know how. So does the halfling, who honestly has no idea.
On Halfling
Quickling: One great thing
A quickling who once saved the party’s life is turning thirty and wants to do one great thing before the end. They have a list, and it’s long.
On Quickling
Avarie: A god’s errand
An avarie arrives with orders from its god and needs mortal hands for the part it can’t be seen doing. The pay is a favor from a god, worth more than gold and much harder to collect.
On Avarie
Daemune: Called home
A daemune is gathering the goblins and orcs who claim its blood into a warband. Some of them want to follow it, some want it gone, and the party is in Narsis when it happens.
On Daemune
Headhunter: The double contract
Two tribes have hired Ruk Tamaro’s people, through middlemen, to kill each other’s chiefs, and neither knows the other is paying. Under Rokson a headhunter can’t break either contract, so the party has to find a way to keep both.
On Headhunter
Page: The oath
A knight of the old Estharian line has died and left a page sworn to a lord who’s been dead for a century, by an oath no court remembers how to break. The page will follow the oath anywhere, and right now it leads into the Fallen Kingdom.
On Page
Plainsman: The duel at the yards
A plainsman from the Crecian prairie has challenged Ashara Tolun over a blood feud, and she has accepted, which nobody can remember her doing in twenty years. Her students want the party to find out what the feud is before the duel, because she won’t tell them.
On Plainsman
Pickpocket: The wrong purse
A pickpocket lifted a purse on the Tharsis road and found a Legion seal inside, with a list of names, half of them crossed out. Mother Sable won’t fence it and won’t keep it, and its owner has started asking around.
On Pickpocket
Scout: The patrol that came back
A Rift Watch patrol came back from the Scar three days late, all six scouts, and none of them remember the three days. Ennis Calder trained all six. He says their forms are different now, and better.
On Scout
Woodsman: The silent grove
A grove in the Tropics of Dumet has gone silent: no birds, no insects, no wind in the leaves. Maela sent three woodsmen in and two came back. The third is still in there, and Maela says she can hear him laughing.
On Woodsman
Mageling: The runaway
A mageling has fled the novice halls with a book they shouldn’t have, and the Provost wants it back quietly, before the Emissary Council hears. The mageling says the book is about spirit, and that the Spire has been lying about why it’s forbidden.
On Mageling
Elementalist: The burning village
A hill village in Amari keeps catching fire on clear nights, always from the inside. Someone there is an elementalist and doesn’t know it yet, and the villagers have started choosing who to blame. Oriel Vask wants the child found before the village finishes choosing.
On Elementalist
Runescribe: The answering wall
One of the carved walls in Elderfall Canyon has started rewriting itself overnight, a line at a time. Vharek can read the old words but not the new ones, and the new ones are getting longer.
On Runescribe
Gravedigger: The empty graves
Graves Corvin dug himself are open in the Fallen Kingdom, from the inside, and their dead are walking north toward the Inner City in a line. Something is calling them, and Corvin wants to know who’s using his dead before the Grand Temple decides it was him.
On Gravedigger
Priest: The answered prayer
A village priest near Kinforge says her prayers have started being answered, out loud, in a voice nobody else hears. Jonathan wants her brought to the Temple of Goad before half the province decides she’s a prophet and the other half decides she’s mad.
On Priest
Monk: The fourth monastery
A dying monk reaches the Red Dragon with a scroll naming a fourth monastery, of a dragon color nobody has heard of. Teodra Vay burns the scroll in front of the party, then asks them quietly to find it.
On Monk
Hermit: The missing page
A page has been cut from a book in the Grand Library’s closed stacks, and the only person who could read it was a hermit. Ostin says it wasn’t his student. He says it the way people do when they’re sure it was.
On Hermit
Minstrel: The wrong note
Seline Aubret has found one more celestial tune, and every time it’s played in the hall the harbor goes dead calm and the gulls stop crying. She wants to know what it’s for before anyone plays it to the end.
On Minstrel
New Saellem: What the frost gave back
A thaw near Harrow Ridge uncovered a ring of standing stones nobody remembers, and the snow won’t settle inside it. An Exuvae scholar has already arrived, and so has someone from the Rift Watch, and they disagree badly about what should happen next. Both want to hire the party.
On New Saellem
Jewall: The deep shaft
A crew in the lowest mine broke into a gallery nobody dug, cold as midwinter and lined with old dwarven runes. The Council of Forges sealed it the same day and put out word that nothing was found. Two of the crew have gone missing since, and the third wants to hire someone who doesn’t answer to the Council.
On Jewall
Tharsis: The ambush on the causeway
Bandits keep hitting the old causeway through Mellowdeep Marsh, and the traders at Bartle’s Post will pay well to see it stop. The bandits wear Narsian colors and fight like Tharsian soldiers. Somebody wants a war, and whoever it is pays better than the traders do.
On Tharsis
Crecia: The wrecker’s lamp
Ships keep running aground on the Azulean coast on clear nights, and the lighthouse keeper swears the lamp never went out. Somebody is showing a second light, and the cargo that washes up never reaches the harbor master’s ledger. The fishing crews know who it is. They won’t say until the party proves it isn’t working for the Serpent’s Coin.
On Crecia
Dumasque: A breach of Rokson
Someone poisoned a well that two tribes share, and both tribes blame each other. Under Rokson the poisoner’s whole tribe answers for it, and both are already sharpening blades. The city’s scholars want outsiders to find the truth, because no tribe will accept a verdict from another tribe.
On Dumasque
Esthar: Maygon’s map
A dying Maygonite presses a map into the party’s hands: a route through the Fallen Kingdom to a vault Maygon never reached. Three other crews already know the map exists. The ancient spirits along the route still remember the night the city burned, and they don’t care for living visitors.
On Esthar
Amari: The false prophet
A preacher in the hills outside Verinton claims to be the one the Amari prophecy promised, and he has the tribes’ young warriors behind him. If he’s real, Kyra falls. If he’s a fraud, someone in another province is paying him. The elders of Kyra want to know which before the tribes march.
On Amari
Moria: The offering at the shrine
Morian hunters found fresh offerings at the Shrine of Dekkashraen, and Morians don’t leave those anymore. The tracks lead back toward the city. A widow-general wants the party to follow them quietly, before the city finds out one of its own houses is praying to the god who forsook it.
On Moria
Menusia: Back to Amone
A veteran of the defense of Amone wants to go back for a friend he left buried there. The forest has covered the battlefield, the Lost City’s gates have closed again, and something has been moving in the caves of Mirian since the army left. He knows the way in. He doesn’t know the way out.
On Menusia
Narsis: The staged war
A Narsian smuggler swears the skirmish that started the latest war with Tharsis was staged, and that the soldiers who struck first were Tharsians in Narsian gear. He wants to get proof to the surface before the Legion comes down the stairs. Schzo’ersch would rather the war go on, and they already know he’s talking.
On Narsis
Mining: The warm seam
Vesk’s crews broke into a seam under Narsis that is warm to the touch and getting warmer, and the ore it gives melts at half the heat it should. Two crews have refused to go back down. Jewall’s Council of Forges has already offered to buy every cart of it, sight unseen, and Vesk wants to know what they know before she sells.
On Mining
Blacksmithing: The forged mark
Blades with Brannoc Dunmar’s mark are turning up in the hands of the bandits on the Mellowdeep causeway, and every one of them breaks on the second blow. Brannoc never made them, and he wants the forger found before the Council of Forges decides he did. Whoever is copying his mark learned it at his own anvil.
Jewelcrafting: The paste necklace
A first-generation family of Tharsis is about to pawn its founding necklace to cover a debt, and Ysolde Marrow swears the stones in it were swapped for glass years ago. If she’s right, somebody inside the family did it. If she says so out loud, she’ll never cut another stone in Tharsis, so she wants the party to find out first.
Sigildry: The sigil she won’t paint
An Exuvae scholar has offered Mother Sorn a fortune for a sigil copied from the standing stones at Harrow Ridge, and she refused. Now her apprentices are being approached one by one, and one has already gone missing with a sketch. She wants the apprentice back before anyone paints that sigil on anything.
On Sigildry
Leatherworking: The hide that wasn’t
A hunter sold Tavo Rennick a hide he swore came from a lion, and everything made from it is going wrong: boots that walk their wearers into the ruins at night, a belt that won’t stop tightening. The hunter has disappeared into the Lien Grassland, and Tavo needs to know what the animal really was before he sells another piece.
Tailoring: The wrong sash
A body turned up at the edge of Dumasque wearing the sash of the Hopli tribe, and the Hopli swear he isn’t one of theirs. Under Rokson, somebody has to answer for him. Sahrim wove that sash and knows who she sold it to, and she’ll only tell someone from outside the tribes.
On Tailoring
Fletchery: The black pine
Wolves have pulled down two cutting crews in Darkwood this month, and both crews were working a stand Wen Harlow has refused to cut for thirty years. The trading post’s buyers want the timber anyway. Wen will tell the party why she leaves that stand alone, but only if they go in with her and see for themselves.
On Fletchery
Carpentry: The library’s missing room
The Grand Library of Crecia has asked Odile Fenn for a new bookcase in its locked wing, and the plans leave a space behind it that shows up on no floor plan. Odile built the old one too, forty years ago, and she remembers what she was told to forget. She’d like someone to look before she starts work.
On Carpentry
Engineering: The carriage that came back
A founding family’s carriage came back from the Mellowdeep causeway without its family, without its driver and without a scratch on it. Ludo Kesh built it, and he says the axle has been swapped for one he didn’t make. Whoever swapped it knew exactly how his carriages are built, and the family wants answers from the man they paid.
On Engineering
Alchemy: The cure that spread
Verity Oake brewed a cure for a fever going through the Port of Doonan, and the fever stopped. Now the people who drank it hear the hum in the ground, and they’ve started walking north toward the Scar in their sleep. Verity swears the cure was clean. She wants someone to follow the sleepers before the Rift Watch decides to stop them.
On Alchemy
Animal Husbandry: The thing in the second fence
Bram Tolley has something in his inner paddock the pixies brought him from the Forest of Frost, and it’s growing. He says it’s harmless. The Rift Watch says it’s the third animal out of that forest this year with eyes like the dark light over the Scar, and they want it destroyed. Bram wants the party to help him get it somewhere neither side will find it.
Names: A middle name at the table
A player who wants a middle name for a commoner is asking for a secret, so make it one: a royal parent nobody admits to, a family’s ambition, or a forged charter. The name is the question the story gets to answer.
On Names
Names: Giving a name back
A soldier who leaves Mandak’s Legion gives the name Mandak back, and until a charter grants a new one they have no family name in the city’s eyes. Nobody gives a lord’s name back quietly, and the lord always hears about it.
On Names
Names: A dwarf with no name yet
A young dwarf can start the game unnamed, going by their mother’s name and birth order. Earning the name is a fine first goal, and the elders decide when the work is good enough, not the player.
On Names
Names: The master’s ledger
A freed gnome is free in the eyes of their new city, but their old master’s ledger in the Northern Reach still lists them under their work-name. Anyone who learns the work-name can find the ledger, and the dwarf who keeps it.
On Names
Play#
Levels: Leveling by milestone
If counting experience isn’t your table’s idea of fun, skip it and give out a level when the party finishes something that matters. The experience rules come to about a level every two sessions, so that’s a good pace to aim for.
On Levels
Levels: Who can bring them back
Decide before the campaign starts how easy a priest is to find. If resurrection is a short walk to the temple, players will be bold. If the nearest priest is three provinces away, they’ll be careful.
On Levels
Levels: Trainers are people
A trainer is a character, not a shop. Think of the sergeant who only teaches soldiers who’ve bled for the garrison, or the hermit who wants a favor first. When a player wants to spend points, that’s a good reason to send the party somewhere.
On Levels
Levels: Make the fizzles count
At low levels a fizzle happens a few times a session, so describe them. The heal that only warms the wound, or the arrow that misses by a hand’s width, tells everyone at the table this character is still learning.
On Levels
Levels: Living legends
Few campaigns get this far, and that’s the point. When you put a duke at level 250 or an archbishop at 400 into the world, you know how much they’ve done to get there, and so do your players.
On Levels
Later on#
Agility: Footprints on the roof
Someone is robbing the houses of the first generation over the rooftops, and the watch says only one of Lilian Gom’s walkers could do it. Lilian wants the thief found before the watch decides which one.
On Agility
Influence: The council vote
Gregory Simmons wants a candidate to lose Blithe’s council vote, and he doesn’t want anyone to learn that he wanted it. His walkers get the job. The candidate has walkers of their own.
On Influence
Purity: Fever in Ironholde
Fever has broken out in Ironholde Prison, and the warden has sealed the gates. Thomas Moar wants medicine carried in. The warden wants nobody coming back out, and some of the prisoners want very much to leave with whoever does.
On Purity
Knowledge: The overdue book
A book Yendor Valkez lent out forty years ago has turned up in a dealer’s stall in Crecia, and he wants it back. The borrower is dead, the dealer has sold it twice since, and the last buyer is reading it to find out why so many people want it.
On Knowledge
Wisdom: The way down
A young Tharsian went down to Narsis to take the first test of wisdom and hasn’t come back up. Their family wants them found before the pamphlets in the taverns learn that a Tharsian went to Narsis willingly.
On Wisdom
Power: Whose chain
Nile Fin has sent her walkers to break a chain in the Jewall mines without saying whose. The gnome wearing it thinks it’s a rescue, the dwarf who owns him thinks it’s theft, and Fin says it’s a test of strength and nothing more.
On Power
Chance: The table at Doonan
Someone has finally beaten Phinius Garland at his dice table, and he’s delighted. The winner took a ship in the bet, and the ship’s owners, who never agreed to be wagered, want it back.
On Chance
Protection: The witness
A clerk who saw a first-generation lord kill a man has to reach the courts in Crecia alive. Drogan won’t send the city guard against a founding name, so he sends his walkers, and somebody with a founding name is paying to see them fail.
On Protection
Avoidance: The duel nobody wins
Two merchant houses of Maelo agreed to settle a feud with a duel, and both hired walkers of avoidance. Neither can land a blow, the duel is in its third day, and the whole town is betting on it.
On Avoidance
Destruction: The cracked hammer
Damied’s hammer has split along the haft, and he says only a smith in Jewall can rework it. He won’t let it out of his sight, so whoever walks his rode carries it there and back with him, through country where people remember the things he’s broken.
On Destruction
Elements: The cold on the top floor
A corner of the Mage Spire’s top floor went cold last winter and has stayed cold through the summer. Varr says it’s a test that went wrong years ago, and she wants walkers who won’t ask whose test it was.
On Elements
Faith: The prophet’s question
Pilgrims are coming to Hale by the hundred to hear Prophet Qora, and the priests of the Temple of Goad want to know which god Qora speaks for before the next hundred arrive. They’ve asked Qora’s walkers to find out. Qora has asked them to tell the priests whatever they find.
On Faith
Cognition: Lights on the marsh
The will-o-wisps of Mellowdeep Marsh have started leading travelers to Hin Vin’s stilt house, and he didn’t ask them to. He wants to know who’s steering them, and he’d rather not leave the house to find out.
On Cognition
Endurance: The long road
Sinthos needs a message carried to the Port of Doonan faster than a horse can take it, because horses have been dying on that road. A walker of endurance can run it. Whatever is killing the horses hasn’t tried one yet.
On Endurance
