I like the use of scrying as a medium for inciting adventure. Exposition with a touch of supernatural uncertainty. Any study of Dee and Kelley’s search for knowledge shows the complexity of dealing with angels (yes, I’m assuming that it was all real here and not an elaborate hoax by one or both parties). Often, they recorded conversations only to discover later they had been communing with malevolent entities. Other times, they created elaborate ritual furniture only to have later communications highlight inaccuracies that required reworking, which they could ill-afford.

Visions provided Dee and Kelley with hope and the promise of things to come, but not without wiggle room for doubt or the sense that they were seeing one of many possibilities (long before any theories of infinite universes might have eased their expectations).

Admittedly, you don’t want to be sending characters on wild goose chases all the time—that would be tiring and quickly lose its appeal. However, there’s something to be said for specific vagueries. Lost in Translation—the adventure that will come in the core book and which I have been running at events over the last month or so—starts with a simple request from Dee for his agents to seek out a relic. Yet, no specifics really exist and the mechanism that guides them—one of Kelley’s eyelashes—seems at odds with the importance of the task at hand.

It isn’t the only way that past adventures have started; The Gongscourer’s Baby starts with news from Dee himself about events in London, while Window of the Soul starts in the midst of drunken revelry in Southwark. However, I want the game to emulate Dee’s own progression in relation to Queen and Court, such that adventures set in the 1580s are more likely than not to be driven by Kelley’s visions from the shewstone.

To this end, I envision that the game will include a few random tables to generate nuggets, hints and vague insights to include in your adventures. Some of these might pay off, others not—in some measure, I feel these might well tie into the way Fortune works in The Dee Sanction, which sets it apart from the base Utility system. A little like a flashback, tying some facet of a vision into current events provides sufficient foresight to allow a re-roll or to support a slight retooling of outcomes.

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 yet… In 1938, the savage hoards of the Eicsh Abk invaded, and their forces carried across the expanse between worlds in great metallic capsules. The Martian invaders, clad in metallic skins that rolled, stalked or hovered, seared and ravaged the forces that greeted them, feasting on the bodies of the fallen.

The warlords of the red planet unleashed weapons of mass destruction that would scar the planet for decades – atomic, biological and chemical constructs that fouled the water, choked the soil and poisoned the populace. However, in the end, the invaders suffered a mortal blow, sickening and dying in our own alien world’s invasive climate.

By the late 40s, victory seemed like just another face of defeat. The battlefield of Earth lay shattered and defiled. When communication next came from Mars, humanity greeted the words with incredulity, anger and revulsion. The Martian Senate – the Ahka Thca – passed on messages of sorrow and despair, for the attack on Earth had not been sanctioned by the greater population, but launched by a petty and vicious few.

In 1951, the Martians set up a diplomatic representation and embassy in New York to work alongside world states to engender peace and repair the damage done by the attack. Mars shipped resources from their world and contributed support for the creation of a UN-backed team of specialists to handle the clean-up operation. The ‘Red Watch‘ would work to root out extant War Criminals and defuse ongoing threats: leftover bio-weapons, intractable warlords, dangerous collaborating extremists, and those in possession of alien technology intent on using it for their own bitter ends.

Martians work alongside representatives of world military and intelligence agencies in tracking down rogue elements, sleeper agents and war criminals who pushed the conflict beyond the bounds deemed reasonable by the Martian Senate. Also, bio-containment operations seek out Red Weed pockets that continue to poison and subvert the environment. Martian Ambassadors pursue ongoing talks with the key World Governments on reparations and make formal apologies for the decision to use the Red Weed, an aggressive bio-agent banned on their home planet for centuries.

— Background for a new genre setup, the fifth stretch goal of the upcoming Sanction RPG Kickstarter. Get notified!

I like Incriminating Evidence as a way to hold stuff against someone – and I’m good that the counters cut specific records or details. The players all know their characters have guilty secrets. Who discovered them and how they found out doesn’t need to have a specific answer. Ultimately, someone knows something that you wished they didn’t.

Under those circumstances, I suspect it would be a good idea to make amends. It’s occurred to me, for example, that someone with Incriminating Evidence might try to offset their guilt with selfless acts. For example, you might spend a point to take the hit when someone else gets hurt – whether they’re hit physically or struck by reputational dirt, grievous red tape or whatever. If a team mate will take damage to Access or Power, you spend a point of Incriminating Evidence BEFORE they turn over the effect tokens to find out the extent of the damage.

For example, George wishes to have an audience with Prince Reznik to communicate a matter of considerable import. Reznik’s personal advisor, Devit, suspects the information might undermine one of his plans and intercepts George, Maria and Peter. George rolls the dice and gets a twelve, without using any cards to adjust the success threshold. His team aren’t totally sold on the situation and see no advantage in helping, so they don’t spend pool points, and George himself doesn’t have enough to influence the roll.

The sigil on the dice rolled indicates that George has fallen foul of the System and the GM gestures to take an effect counter. Peter impresses his intent to step in and he discards an Incriminating Evidence counter, which George happened to have applied to him earlier. A gesture of good will to win George over, or a shaky hope that they will have a better relationship in future?

The GM turns over the counter and finds a result of 2 Power. Devit sends guards to retain and restrain George. When they appear, Peter steps in the way and attempts to distract them, while George gets away. The guards lose patience and beat Peter up, before giving chase. George won’t get that audience with Reznik today, but he might find another way to get the information to him if he can escape the guards – at least he isn’t locked in some dungeon cell. And Peter’s bruises will heal with time.

To be clear, the fact that the Counter that Peter burned to take the hit for George originally came from George is irrelevant. Once you have Incriminating Evidence Counters in play, it doesn’t matter where they came from. The blemish on your record exists – how you seek to better your reputation and, perhaps, clear your name as a result is entirely separate and non-specific.

On the other end of the spectrum, I see Incriminating Evidence as harmful to advancement. While you have any IE tokens, you can’t improve your character.

Current thinking is that if you complete an adventure with more points than you started, those represent a pool for possible improvement. If you have X Access above your starting threshold, you can spend them to improve a Pool by one point. For a little more, you can take a character card from the development pile – which will be a separate deck specifically intended to support improved expertise. However, if you have IE tokens, you need to exceed your base pool plus those tokens before you’re considered to have an excess. Maybe.

I’m still pondering this one.

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