In terms of dwindling resources—Flashlights, Smokes, Sanity and Hit Points—the secret comes in the readiness to support the other members of the team. The fist-focussed bruiser in the team might only have a D4 in Flashlights, but that doesn’t mean that they stop investigating when they throw a 1 or 2; they continue to support the team and the team does the same in return. Group benefit comes from the meeting of resources in the middle.

It does mean that the group cannot split up; the expertise envisaged within Flashlights and Smokes has far greater flexibility than that. Players have the opportunity to flex their narrative muscles and come up with reasonable explanations as to how they can read an obscure language or bring to the fore expertise in niche studies. There’s no need to scatter skill points like bird seed on the off-chance that you might need to read Sumerian in the next adventure or unravel some devious accounting; the story prevails and the investigation progresses. You roll your Resources after the fact to show how these newly revealed truths impact you.

The Dee Sanction is similar; the same meeting of purpose and skill matter more than the individual. As much as in stories of the Mythos, the Agents of Dee are expendable and they faces forces they cannot hope to defeat or expel alone. They depend on the knowledge of their associates, their exposure to strange rituals and curious cults. Each cannot carry the investigation on their own, but neither will the group ever finding themselves deadended or irrevocably thwarted. The Dee Sanction embraces the notion of failing forward, so that even when the Agents falter they do not totally lose their momentum. They stumble on, wounded, exposed or burdened, but never without options. They have the means to meet their adversaries head on, if only their hearts and souls can hold out against the onslaught ranged against them.

Every day during August, I’ll be writing something new on The Dee Sanction and aim to connect the word prompt of the day with the development of the game. Check out the concept, the list and the graphics over at AUTOCRATIK.

However, sometimes rest is insufficient. Some enemies inflict Consequences that are not as easily healed—such as poison, paralysis, dismemberment, or worse! In this case, the information about the attack will also indicate any practical, alternative means of recovery.

A Consequence will always be something short, memorable and open to a little interpretation in how it might hamper the Agent’s general activities. 

Usually, the character will require special medical care or access to a place of healing; loss of a limb might require regenerative powers, acquisition of some rare herbal concoction, or visitation with a specific angel or entity.

A physical Consequence is called an Injury; a mental or visceral Consequence is referred to as an Affliction. In The Dee Sanction, you might also encounter other lingering conditions, such as Curses, Omens or Burdens.

The setting information will provide additional rules to handle these unusual conditions and searching out the means to make a recovery. Most require additional effort, expense or the passage of time to rest up and heal.

In the meantime, the GM may state a Consequence in support of a Challenge Step-Down—which means you throw a die (at least) one size smaller than normal—or indicate that it makes a Challenge impossible for the Agent to handle. For example, sprinting seems highly improbable with an Injury Consequence of a Broken Leg.

Every day during August, I’ll be writing something new on The Dee Sanction and aim to connect the word prompt of the day with the development of the game. Check out the concept, the list and the graphics over at AUTOCRATIK.

And so it is, that both the Devil and the angelic Spirit present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.

[ Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī ]

Power and objects walk hand in hand. For some, the power imbued within an object arose from association. The very contact that an item had with an individual of significance left a residue or some echo of their soul. Like the bonding of a witch with a familiar or the harmony sought between a gambler and their favourite dice, possession would infuse an object with a preternatural quality accessible to others. If you could find something worn by a saint, then you could leverage the power that the saint exhibited in life. Or at least some aspect of it.

Conversely, the very drive and purpose of the seeker might have something to do with the influence of the object. The sinner who seeks to make use of a holy relic will likely find the task fruitless, whereas the faithful will experience something quite different. In some ways, the power might seem to no longer lie with the object in that case, but that the object serves as a test of focus and resolve, a mirror to the soul of those who would seek to use it. Therein the words of Rumi echo, for in presenting objects of desire we are tested – and in that test we find those worthy and those solely seeking to better themselves at a loss to others.

Doctor Dee on the other hand seems to have seen something altogether different in the power of objects. Relics and items of power neither possessed the power themselves nor served as key to the lock of personal potential. Instead, Dee perceived objects as conduits, a means to harness the vibrations or reflected power that permeated the many layers of reality – surging forth through the supernaturall via the application of the intellectuall to manifest in the physicall, the lowest state of all.

In The Dee Sanction, this reflected puissance manifests both in the Tradecraft of Magic, where characters may use objects to further their ends against powerful entities of the supernatural, or they may seek to harness some fragment of an artefacts potential, rather like a grail – unworthy of the greater power of an object but able to channel some minor fragment. The Black Seal of Doctor Dee, for example, serves as a major artefact, one which the player driven Agents will only rarely use themselves and then only as a means to ward fixed areas against ingress and egress. Mirrors of a certain quality, too, will serve as a medium for communication through the divine ether, like telegrams carried on the words of archangels.

Mechanically, using an object with Tradecraft will strike that from the scarce major tool kit the characters have to draw upon as a group; whereas, the application of fragmentary powers will require attunement of some form, specific to the object, and the Challenging a Resource fitting to the task (and set by the Gamemaster). The cost of the Challenge will inevitably drain the Resource, but the specific format (and explanation) of the object may carry with it specifics (in the form of simple Tags) as to the repercussions of failure. Indeed, many artefacts and objects of significance will have keyed random collections of unfortunate side effects and consequences that arise from ill-guided misuse. Agents beware the frivolous handling of potent curios.