When you’re dealing with the supernatural and dabbling in the occult, you’re already dealing with a grey agenda, murky with heresy. The Agents have their own livelihood and service preservation to consider, facing forces that cannot hope to fully understand, whether commonplace — like the forces and agents of nations — or supernatural — like the Fae, demons, and other creatures born of strange forces.

However, I didn’t want to have the game devolve into an uphill struggle nor did I want to have failure become a barrier to advancement toward some kind of conclusion. Yes, that conclusion might be some pyrrhic outcome, but it’s an achievement nevertheless.

Therefore, we have success or failing forward when you meet a Challenge.

We also have enemies that don’t solely go out of their way to slaughter their opponents, seeking instead to disable them. If the Agents fail to stop an adversary, they survive to face the music and, perhaps, the opportunity to make amends.

The death of characters might not be rare, but pointless losses should be. Every Agent has the opportunity to leave their mark or become part of the ongoing story. The game encourages that one or more players keep a Journal; it might just be their character sheets and adventure notes, or they might consider something more in-depth.

The GM and the table as a whole benefit from the investment in something more making pointless encounters and meaningless conversations with non-player characters rare — there’s the potential for anything to come back later and reveal some hidden depth or return value.

I’m not looking to reinvent wheels or upset the tabletop paradigm (those things are rare), but I hope that The Dee Sanction makes use of a few more interesting ideas and common practices at the tabletop that will make sessions memorable.

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.

There is no push mechanic, as such. You can spend Fortune to re-roll a really bad throw, but otherwise you either succeed or you succeed with Consequences. Admittedly, sometimes those Consequences might make you feel like failure might have been the better options, but at least in this version of events you’re always pushing on.

For example, a player portraying a street-schooled ruffian might want to pick a lock. They plan to do it with a set of lockpicks, and the other characters will keep an eye out to provide some quiet time to for their colleague to focus. All seems set, on this dark and stormy night, for the Agents to break into the home of the Duke of Norfolk. The player throws a 1. The lock clicks and the well oiled mechanism slides free without intervention. Alas, a gust of wind catches the door and thrusts it open with a bang. As the characters gaze inside — worried a little that they have angered some spirit and set it free — a flame flickers into life in a ground floor servant’s chamber and a muffled bell chimes in the quarters of the Duke’s faithful guard. The game’s afoot; can the Agents find what they’ve come for before either the servant or the guard catch them in the act?

If they’d been stuck outside, the Agents might have found another solution or way in, but how would that have helped other than to have wasted time and set the story back? Now, the Agents can push ahead with raised stakes and an extra challenge or two to face; but, they’re pushing onward nevertheless.

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.

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.