I am sorry, this read-through is taking longer than I expected. Now however, I am laid up with my foot elevated after a really bad ankle twisting, so I have no excuse not to get on with it.
I am going to get tired of saying this, but chapter four begins with more gorgeous art:
Blows me away. Golden apples of the sun indeed*. Then we get into a core mechanic that will be familiar to Traveller grognards – 2d6+skill rating a target number that is usually eight. Thing that male it different from Traveller are your traits – potentially giving you some sort of supernatural bonus; and opposed rolls, where the target number is based on your opponent’s skill plus eight. Unskilled rolls are just 2d6, and the target number rises to ten. If you end up beating the target number by 5 (impossible if you are unskilled) you get a critical success, and there is a list of critical effects the player can choose from, including your team-mate getting an automatic success on a related action, succeeding in a way that impresses somebody, or infuriates someone, or in a way that no one notices. In combat, crits include gaining the initiative, doing extra damage, or interestingly, making yourself a target, thus protecting a crewmate from attack.
Failure isn’t just the absence of success. The GM might sayyou succeed, but taking damage, if such a thing is appropriate, or that your action succeeds but takes longer than you wanted, or attracts undue attention.
But you can avoid failure by spending will, point for point to add to your dice roll. Your will points power your magic though, so don’t spend them all. Will must also be used if you want to take actions when zero or less Endurance (effectively hit points). You can recover 1d6 points of will by invoking your drive.
In this game, I don’t think combat is really the thing, social conflict is the way I imagine most changes are made, but the combat rules seem … functional. They don’t inspire me, but I don’t think they are meant to. Things I like are the abstracted ranges, things I don’t like include target numbers to hit, based on the opponent’s athletics skill. I do like the rules for fighting mobs though, as turning innocent high street shoppers against you is exactly what some fae trickster might do. I especially like the rules for saving the lives of those shoppers in the aftermath of any conflict.
I do like the social challenges though. Unlike many systems where a decent persuade roll is more akin to mind control, this instead imposes a penalty on actions which contradict the persuader’s intentions. You can shake off that penalty at the cost of 1d6 will points, which is a potentially high cost. Maybe it’s better just to do what he fae king wants…
There are rules for experience here too, and two levels of advancement. PCs get five experience boxes. And they can check one for things like closing a case, learning something new about the hidden world, making a critical fail, or advancing the crew’s goal. When all five are checked, you can raise a skill by one, up to your skill cap, and check and advancement box. You have three of these, and when you have checked all three, you can do things like increase your skill cap by one, gain a new Trait, or get a new asset for the crew.
*https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55687/the-song-of-wandering-aengus
fictionsuit.org 