Keep at the table. Flip when you forget.
The Four Tracks
FACE(0–6 · starts 3)
- → Gain: keep your word with witnesses, win cleanly, show restraint at the right moment, honor a debt at personal cost.
- → Lose: break your word, back down after challenging, beg, humiliate the weak, panic visibly.
- → Spend 1: lower a social/ceremonial difficulty by 2 • demand a private audience • stop a lesser opponent from escalating • force an honest answer.
- → At 0: you have no leverage. Respectable people dismiss you. Rebuilding is a story problem.
NAME(0–3 · starts 1)
- → Gain: uphold your code at great cost • spare when revenge was earned • defeat a feared opponent cleanly • do something the neighborhood will still tell stories about.
- → Spend: make an impossible ask of someone who respects the code • call in a debt that should have gone cold • turn a loss into legend.
COMPOSURE(0–3 · starts 2, refreshes to 2)
- → Spend 1: treat a snap action as Set Form • ignore 1 Face loss • act first in a formal confrontation • refuse bait without ceding ground.
- → Recover: accept an insult without retaliation when it costs you something real.
GRIT(0–6 · starts 0)
- → Gain 1: every failed roll.
- → Spend 1:1 after seeing a roll's result to raise it. Grit can push a result to max — that still counts as a break.
The Dice
- Roll your skill die (d4 → d6 → d8 → d10 → d12 → d20). Match or beat the GM's target.
Break
- Roll the max value → the die steps up permanently. Roll the new die, add the result. If it breaks again, keep going.
Tier Caps
- Max 3 skills at d10, 3 at d12, 3 at d20. When a break would push past a full tier, the roll still counts — but the die doesn't step up. Gain 1 Grit instead.
Advantage / Disadvantage
- Roll twice, take higher/lower. Don't stack. Cancel each other out.
Set Form (when calm and unrushed)
- Take half the die value, no roll — d4=2, d6=3, d8=4, d10=5, d12=6, d20=10.
Target Numbers
| TN | Feel |
|---|---|
| 3 | Easy if trained |
| 6 | Tense but ordinary |
| 9 | Difficult |
| 12 | Serious |
| 15 | Extreme |
| 18+ | Nearly impossible → legendary |
How bad is a miss?
- By 1–2: minor cost.
- By 3–5: real cost (Harm up a level, 1 Face lost, obligation heats).
- By 6+: it hurts.
Harm
Unharmed→
Bruised→
Broken→
Hollowed
- Bruised: disadvantage on physical skills (Strike, Steel, Motion, Nerve). Clears between scenes.
- Broken: disadvantage on all skills. No Set Form. Clears between sessions, or with a full scene of care.
- Hollowed: disadvantage on all, no Set Form, every failed roll asks the Sunset Walk question.
Obligation Heat
Held→
Pressing→
Burning
- Calling in an obligation works — no roll — but heat rises one level. Burning + called = relationship may break.
"You are what you do in front of witnesses. You are what you do when nobody sees. You are what you refuse."