+Setting expectations

One of the biggest problems people have is when different expectations collide. An example of this would be the three-hour movie. Everyone is frustrated and annoyed by a three-hour movie, but a three-hour television series is too short they should call it a miniseries. Ask your conspirator what type of game you are going to play before you start, and everyone will be happier for it. When everyone is reading off the same script things move a lot easier.

One Episode only (One shot)

One shots or one and done games are where you come in with your characters fully formed, you don’t have a lot of room for characterisation because the focus of this show is the case. The ‘audience’ only gets to see your characters for a single episode before the series moves onto there next episode and these characters are left behind. However, the live on as a fond memory in their hearts. One shots are generally for people who have trouble getting together but they want to play one game. It is recommended for this that you use the following rule set Xor’Veil.

Xor’Veil Simple- Xor’Veil Homelands

Pilot Episode (First episode of a series)

Pilots are the first game of a series of games. You should have done your creation stories with your Conspirator. This is where you try and work out the dynamic between you and the rest of the investigators. This is where the ‘audience’ is trying to get a feel for your show to see if they like it. Not every pilot works out, and that is okay, that is why it is pilot. But maybe they like a lot of it and want to see more. Pilots are for when people are testing things out for a longer game, and they are seeing if they are viable. It is okay to say that they aren’t some games would be fun if they were longer. It is recommended you use the following rulesets.

Xor’Veil Homelands –Xor’Veil Exile

Short movie (one day one shot)

Short movies are games where you have set aside a day to play. Your characters come in full formed and their backstories completed, you have some room for characterisation, but the focus is on the investigation. The ‘audience’ is watch the movie to see what will happen to your characters not to see how the investigation turns out. This kind of play will have big focus on making memorable moment and trying to avoid fluff and clutter. Short movies are for people who have the ability to set a day aside but they may not meet up again for some weeks or months. It is recommended you use the following rulesets.

Xor’Veil Homelands –Xor’Veil Exile

+Status and Investigations

Status operates both as a resource as well as being ‘life points’ of a kind. As a resource, status is spent in a variety of ways. Most of the time, the conspirator will ask you if you wish to spend influence, honour, or fear on a certain action. This can represent asking for favours, giving your word, exerting pressure, employing contacts and so on.

By doing so, you gain headway by spending the capital of your hard-earned reputation. However, these resources are not inexhaustible and once influence is spent, it can be hard to regain. An investigator may need to prevail upon a wide variety of resources in order to achieve their goals. This can evoke the feeling of a city, an investigation, or an opponent grinding them down. As the investigator is forced to call upon more and more favours, their investigation may advance, but their options begin to narrow and situations may grow more desperate. This is, by design, mean to mimic many of the tropes of the detective fiction.

Favour

By spending an influence in a session, you can see someone you know who specialises in a skill. When you spend an influence, you get the conspirator to make a roll with a specialist. Specialists always have one dot more than the highest person in your group, to a maximum of six, with that skill. This roll may be made as a part of a montage, or other sequence but may not be used in drama.

Call for aid

Calling for aid is similar to a favour. By spending honour, you can call aid. Calling for aid is asking for help with a situation or problem. This can be as simple as getting the guard to help you with tracking someone down, it could be asking someone to help you get into the ball or loan you an item on the understanding that it will be returned in short order and in good condition. Calling for aid may be combined with a favour, for instance, asking a contact to come to the ruins to help you decipher an ancient code.

“I’ll stake my life on it!”

By staking your life on a case, you gain additional bonuses when investigating a crime scene. When you spend honour for crime scene investigation, you gain an additional two skill rolls. This may only be done once per crime scene, and only one investigator may do so. Additionally, this does not come without risk, If the session ends without you solving this crime, you lose two honour. Anyone else investigating the crime also loses one honour, if it remains unsolved. If you expose someone, you gain one additional dice on the first roll of the drama if you take the lead.

Shadow’s presence

The shadow’s presence is unlike favours or calling aid. By spending fear, the underworld knows of your desires and obeys your will. It can be a simple desire such as, “If you see ‘Joey the dentist’, tell me.” If he is in areas the underworld frequents, he will become known to you. This is only effective against the lower rungs of society as members of the underworld are not known for frequenting the balls and galas of high society. More elaborate requests, involving higher levels of underworld involvement cost more fear as the members of the underworld decide whether they’re more afraid of you, or of the consequences of what you’re asking. Only those with very high fear rating would be able to let their shadow be cast so wide.

“Bastard!”

This particular crime is heinous in the extreme. As a result, your desire to bring them down makes you vicious, like a dog with a bone you can’t let go. By spending one fear and one honour, you become obsessive about this case and more importantly, you become obsessed with catching the perpetrator. When you are searching for the Bastard, you gain two action points. These action points are to be used in rolls related to tracking this person down. Additionally, in cinematic scenes, you may spend an action point to gain an additional die worth of damage, and you may re-roll defence rolls against them. Additionally, if you are chasing down a Bastard They gain no dice based on your conduct during an exposé. If you can’t catch the Bastard by the end of the session, you lose two influence.

The Wretched

Losing all your points in influence, honour or fear is an extremely daunting possibility. Just like the need for air, water, or food, you can’t last long without being accepted. When you reach zero for your influence, honour, or fear you become the wretched. Not only are you obsessed with recovering what you once had above all else, everyone knows it. Perversely, this makes it hard to obtain, as such you cannot gamble or use action points. If a session ends with your investigator being wretched, that character is lost. They become detached, walk off into the sunset for a new town, or a new beginning, or simply for somewhere to quietly disappear.

+The crime scene

Most investigations centre around a single incident, the crime scene. Just because the people before us didn’t have the advanced forensic science of today, it doesn’t mean they weren’t able to gather information. An advanced investigator may look at a burglary and be able to determine how skilled or inept the burglar was, the intent of a murder, and many other things. However this is meant to mimic fiction so rather than combing over it again and again there are set limitations to keep the game moving.

Running a crime scene

When running a crime scene, the conspirator will tell you how many clues there are at this crime scene. From this you will gain a number of skill rolls as shown below. However you may have talents or virtues that allows additional skills rolls. Once all your skill checks are used your investigators conclude that they have discovered all they can. What you know and what they do are two different things.

Table Link

Your conspirator will describe the scene in detail. How the area looks, what it smells like, and you will get a vivid picture from what they say. You must cypher out what is important and what is not. It is important to know that only once all the skill rolls are used up will the conspirator tell you if you found all the clues. However, you have more rolls than there are clues, so you must decide what is important and what isn’t. You can do this by figuring what is important and what isn’t yourself, or you can use one of your precious skill rolls. By using a skill roll on a piece of information you have collected from another skill roll, the investigators will determine without a shadow of a doubt if it is one of the clues.

Bellow is how many skill chances you have vs how many clues there are. There will never be less than three clues and never more than seven.

Dismissing or validating evidence

Your skill rolls limit the clues you can collect. However, you always have more skill rolls than clues, so there is the margin for error, though there is also the possibility of getting junk information. This is why you should use banter like in books, movies and television shows to decide what is important and what isn’t. This is a chance to lighten the mood and even get action points. This runs the risk of dismissing valid information.

If one such piece of information falls under such point you can use one of your precious skill rolls to dismiss or validate that information. To validate information for three clues it is a mundane roll. For four clues it is a talented roll. For five it is a talented roll for using one of your skill rolls but a heroic for using an action point. For six clues it is a heroic roll. Finally, for seven clues it is a legendary category roll. Remember you must still give a reason why you believe that this is an important clue or junk information before the roll. Your goal is to investigate and not just throw dice and the mystery.

+Montages

A montage is a sequence of shots strung together to show the passing of time, and the progress gained through that time. Not all of life is exciting and heart pounding adventure, this is also true for your Investigators. Montage represents low risk events strung together for the purpose of advancing the plot. For the most part this will be used to advance an investigation. This represents the group going out and collecting evidence which they can obtain without risk, but it would be somewhat mundane.

When should we use a montage?

You and the other investigators should use a montage when your group would sperate to collect mundane information, would be stuck staking out a place, or combing an area for clue that has been gone over when you just need that extra link. It is for passages of time that may be boring to play out.

How to run a montage?

You tell the Conspirator that you want a series of events, so perhaps the group would go off in pairs, alone, or as a group and they would do a series of mundane tasks to gain information. It may be going from area to area showing a sketch of a person for one group, going to a botanical specialist for another, and another person talking witnesses.

You set out your objectives and what information you hope to gain and then you tell the Conspirator what you’re going to do. Your conspirator will give you a number of options for each section, usually a least three options, taking the examples above. They may suggest for showing the sketch Empathy, Socialise, or Wisdom. They suggest for the botanical specialist, Animalist, Etiquette, and Eccentricity. And finally, they may suggest for talking to witnesses Guile, Deduction, or Intimidate.

With each of these, your conspirator is giving you hints as to what is going on and what is important. Perhaps with showing the sketch around they are saying for Socialise what kind of person are you and can these people relate? Empathy do they feel they can trust you with the information they are going to give you? Lastly there is Wisdom, does that mean this information may be dangerous, perhaps it is not smart to give it.

Your investigators discuss again and then they make their choices as to skills they will use and why, and once again what they hope to gain out of it. After this everyone makes their rolls and then the conspirator narrates the montage.

Why have a montage?

A montage is a chance for you to earn action points, a chance to gain information, and a chance to show off a little bit of your Investigator to the group. So, when you describe the scenes to the conspirator perhaps the conspirator will use those whole cloth for their description of the scene. Thus, you have a chance to spice up the investigation. Perhaps your investigator is a tough guy the meanest guy on the street, but he sees a little girl lost and walks her home, her grabbing on his massive finger with her hand. You can pass up your opportunity to gain information to develop your investigator. That is worth some action points. Little details are what makes a TV show, movie or book. Here you have a chance to pepper in the little details of your world. From describing the world to describing who you are within it.

+Chases

One of the most exciting scenes outside of action set pieces is that of the chase. Running down the bad guy the will they won’t they of can they catch them? Additionally, the investigators can be the people chasing or the people being chased. So, it is set out so that neither side has an advantage. How to win is set out first because it is a little unusual. Chases are meant to be exciting, but at a certain point they drag thus, they have a definitive end. So, will they or won’t they?

How to win a chase

Unlike most skill challenges, winning is a little unusual. At the beginning of a chase it is won if either side wins two of the skill challenges in a row until it hits round three. After round three a person must win three skill challenges in a row to win. After round seven one side only needs to win two in a row. After round ten if the chaser has won the majority they only need win two more regardless of if they are in succession or not, if the runner has won the majority they only need to win one more. If you win a chase after three rounds combat is not possible everyone is exhausted. Who ever is caught is caught at this point they are unable to resist as they find themselves heaving for breath.

Beginning a chase

Almost all chases begin with an athletics roll unless someone is quick of wit and yells something out which allows the group to use another skill at the start, unless this is done with in the starting seconds of a chase almost all chases begin with an athletics check. After this chase begins in earnest.

Running a chase

Running a chase requires both parties have a piece of free paper. They each choose one of three options avoid, run-down/run, and hide. Avoid is strong against run-down/run, run-down/run is strong against hide, hide is strong against avoid. In addition, if both parties choose avoid the chaser has the advantage, if both parities choose hide the runner has the advantage.

Avoid is avoiding the obstacle they placed in your path as the chaser or as the runner throwing an obstacle in their way avoiding them rather than running. Running down or running is self-explanatory, you are attempting to run down the person or out run them respectively. Hide can be you hiding from your chaser or hiding from the runner’s line of sight, so you can grab them. Both parities write down their choice and then they choose an appropriate skill. After this both parties go to the announce stage, announcing their choice then they roll off. They roll off and then someone narrates. The conspirator may give the investigator(s) a chance to narrate as they may earn action points in way.

Multi person chases

Multi person chases are actually the norm, however they are divided into two categories where you are chasers or if you are the runners. With this there are two modes get ‘em or scatter. With get ‘em they runner is attempting to out run and outwit your crew without getting caught and is run in a similar manner to standard chases with some exceptions. Scatter is run as if you are each running your own individual chase unless you stick together.

Table link

Get ‘em

With more than one member of your team you have the advantage in chasing down a singular person or at least less than the number your group contains. Like when running a chase you each write down your choices as to avoid, run-down, or hide. IT is important to note that each investigator choses separately. However, if there is more than one runner you chose the target your going after. Additionally, at the start of a chase you have another option, ‘go around’. This represents the group out maneuvering the runner. The person going around get the chance to nap the runner in single round, if they beat their roll they have them regardless of how many they have lost or won beforehand.

Go around

When you go around you write down what round you will appear you must hide this from the rest of the investigators when you hand it to the conspirator. The earlier you appear the harder it will be to nab the runner. Conversely the later you appear the easier it will be. However, if the chase is not still happening you do not get to attempt to nab them. So let us say you say you will appear in round six but they got away in round five you don’t get to act. Additionally, you must announce the target your going after if there are multiple targets. Finally, if you fail to nab them you are now a chaser with one loss under your belt.

See Table below

If this would ever make you go beyond six dice, treat the additional dice as you would a hero point for that round only.

The runner

Unlike normally the runner only needs two successive wins to get away. However, with multiple people chasing them they are unlike to ever have the advantage against one person. So, if they win two rounds against any one of the investigators, that person is no longer chasing them and can no longer participate in the chase. Thus, the runner must outwit or out run people one by one.

Scatter

Scatter is where your group splits in all directions as to make it more difficult to catch any one of you. If you are running as a group and the enemy is running after you, you treat each group as single person and run the chase as per normal with the group deciding each course of action each turn rather than a singular individual. If you scatter however, the advantage is that you only need to win two rounds in succession at any point in time. Though, each of you will be facing multiple opponents unlikely to gain advantage in your chases. In addition, you begin with one free win against the confused opponents, which will not count towards your successive win count but does to theirs, so they must win three in a row from the very beginning.