Cinco: First Chapters

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Putting together everything I've written so far into something more cohesive and referential!

Most immediate influences here:

Without further ado! The screenshots are slightly out-of-date.

Playing the Game

Your character is your interface with the game as well as your avatar in the fiction. They consist of aspects and features, and have three fluctuating attributes: hearts, bulk, and inspiration.

Aspect Checks

Aspects represent your character’s origin, culture, profession, faction, or any other qualities which make them who they are. Each gives a bonus for D20 rolls when that character attempts something unlikely or exposes themself to danger. These rolls are called aspect checks, and turn out as follows:

  • Victory (20+): The character is in total control.
  • Setback (10–19): The character compromises control.
  • Failure (1–9): The character loses control.

A typical character starts with two aspects representing their origin and background, whose own bonuses are from +2 to +6. Characters improve their existing aspects or gain new ones as they develop throughout a campaign.

You should seek any opportunity to use an aspect bonus, even if their applicability seems tangential to the situation at hand. Aspects are meant to animate your character and weave their motifs into the tapestry of the fiction.

Features

Features are your character’s special abilities, which vary in application and scope. Some are magical spells, others are combat maneuvers, and others are exploration tools. What features are useful depends on the campaign.

Your character starts with 2 features corresponding to their origin (#0) and background (#1). They gain 1 feature every level thereafter (#2–5).

Some features may cost points of inspiration to trigger.

Hearts & Harm

Hearts number your character’s distance from catastrophe. Your character loses hearts when they undergo serious harm. Characters have a base of 3 hearts, but they can have up to 5 hearts with armor.

Typical weapons deal 1 hearts of damage on a hit, though light ones deal ½ and heavy ones deal 1 ½. Some magical weapons increase damage dealt against specific foes.

When your character loses all their hearts, it can mean death. Or it can mean they fall unconscious, and awaken in a strange place if not saved. Death is not the only option, and it could be less interesting than situational alternatives. Decide as a group whether to invite death to the game or not.

Bulk & Inventory

Although representing encumbrance, the true function of bulk is to measure what significant items your character can carry: weapons, armor, scrolls, toolkits, treasure, and so on.

Most items do not fall under bulk’s jurisdiction unless it would be unfair or unreasonable for a character to carry in addition to their typical adventuring loadout.

Inspiration Points

You can spend 1 inspiration to reroll aspect checks or add +5. Your character starts each adventure with inspiration points up to their level, and can restore 1 at a time by losing control or falling into harm.

You can also spend inspiration points to trigger some features, especially powerful ones which allow you to shape the fiction in favor of your character.

You can rename “inspiration” to better reflect your character: arcana, energy, fortune, fury, greed, grit, love, luck, magic, mana, power, or spirit. In doing this, consider how it operates for your character, and role-play accordingly.

Character Genesis

 

Pick an origin and a background! If your character is a human, give them a second background instead of an origin. Allocate aspect bonuses to these: either +4/+4 or +6/+2. Then record your origin feat (#0) and your background feat (#1).

Afterwards, pick up to 3 bulk of starting gear:

  • Light weapon (0 bulk, ½ damage)
  • Medium weapon (1 bulk, 1 damage)
  • Heavy weapon (2 bulk, 1 ½ damage)
  • Light armor (1 bulk, +1 heart)
  • Heavy armor (2 bulk, +2 hearts)
  • Camping supplies (1 bulk)
  • Magical scroll (1 bulk)
  • Professional toolkit (1 bulk)

If you have leftover bulk, you can pick up extra bulky items on your adventures. Others items may prove useful for different campaigns. The picklist above is not the final word either way! Also record your total hearts: 3 plus any from armor.

Finally, pick a name and set of pronouns for your character. Think about all in which they live and what came before them. Imagine what drives them. This is their quest.

Growth After Genesis

You level up after completing a quest and starting a new one. Allocate +1 to any 2 aspects (including new ones if so desired) up to a maximum aspect bonus of +8, and learn a new feature. Your maximum inspiration also increases by 1 each level.

During a quest but between 'episodes', you can also reallocate your character’s aspect bonuses or switch out their equipment. Doing so requires a downtime action.

Campaign Planning

A campaign is best conceptualized in tandem with characters. That could mean that you create your character in line with an existing campaign concept, or that the campaign is inspired by characters already made. The latter encourages collaboration, so it is the approach endorsed in this chapter.

For example, suppose four new characters: a florid buckaroo, an offworlder spy, a tauroch sage, and a human veteran-now-criminal. The setting could be a sci-fi wild west in which aliens have secretly embedded themselves. Perhaps they are waging a hidden war against some force which threatens the cosmos, and which the sage had predicted from the stars.

Before y’all get ahead of yourselves, though, think about what kind of game y’all want to play. What best interests the group? Exploring vast landscapes and strange sites? Interacting with non-player characters and navigating complex social webs? Defeating powerful monsters and mobs of minions in combat? Aligning on a campaign’s focus helps avoid disagreement and disappointment among its participants.

Once everyone agrees about the setting and campaign focus, each player imagines and describes two locations: one very familiar to their character and another which they wish to see. The player or guide can pinpoint these locations on a hex map, 5 hexes wide, so players know where they can travel. The scale of the map depends on the campaign’s scale, whether places are hours or days or weeks apart.

Finally, everyone reports their character’s quest and why they are working together with the rest of the party. Quests are best when they interlock with those belonging to other characters, but are distinct enough to flesh out the campaign and perhaps provoke interesting conflicts.

Now you’re ready to get playing!

Pregame Survey

This is a survey to help align on a game’s premise and direction before the campaign begins! Each participant should rate each answer to each question from 1 (least agree) to 4 (most agree). The answer with the greatest total score is the most agreeable to the table. If there’s no clear “winner”, talk about it!

1. What game premise excites you the most?
Crawling dungeons to recover what treasures lie within.
Helping people by solving problems beyond their reproach.
Untangling complex social networks or situations.
Wandering a fantastic world to see what all it has to offer.

2. Which play activity interests you the most?
Exploring a fascinating world and learning about its history.
Defeating monsters or other enemies in mortal combat.
Interacting with characters and building relationships.
Surviving a hostile environment through ingenuity.

3. How do you want to approach the game’s activities?
I want to challenge my little gray cells by solving problems.
I want to fool around and have a casual time with my friends.
I want to master a system and optimize my character.
I want to tell a story about our characters in a fantasy world.

4. What relationship do you have to your character?
My character should undergo a compelling story arc.
My character’s fate is in my hands, for better or worse.
My character is my game-piece through which I play to win.
My character has desires or behaviors that are not my own.

5. How should the guide facilitate or support the game?
The guide should challenge players’ creativity and ingenuity.
The guide should flesh out a world for the players to explore.
The guide should improvise to react to players’ decisions.
The guide should outline a story for the players to uncover.

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