(Note: This quest is a remake of @nwish425 The Die is Cast - Cult Leader Quest . I asked him for permission to do so a year ago, now I think I have something that could work. So it's partially original, but I put the tag nonetheless. Don't expect everything to be equal in mechanics, settings or else.)

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"In the beginning, there was nothing. No law, no matter, no concept. Then, suddenly, Reality began to take shape, giving shape to concepts, establishing laws and forming matter. Reality was the beginning of everything. But the existence of a beginning implicates the existence of an end and of a story. Reality found that everything moved again toward nothing, like water moving toward a drain. The drain was Annihilation, the End to the Beginning that was Reality. Between the two was Change, the force that turned Reality into Annihilation and Annihilation into Reality. These three are the basic forces in our universe. Understanding these is the first step in seeing things as they really are, behind the curtain of ignorance."

Theodoros, "Of the True Principles", translated from Ancient Greek".

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The City has always been an interesting place, with its dazing lights coming from all the various establishments surrounded by kilometres of desert, appearing as a beacon in a sea of sand.

For people coming from outside the City, it was almost like a dream, existing for a small fraction of their existence, already fading in their memory after leaving.

But for the local people? For them, it was more like a nightmare. The lawless appearance was not just an appearance and where there are money to be made, violence was just behind the corner. Most of them would swear that the City even had a name, but even they don't remember it anymore.

You? You are a new player in this City, ready to make a name for yourself, unlike the City that lost its own. Like everyone who grew up here, you know that there are things that don't have an explanation: why nobody remembers the name of the City, for instance. What howls in the desert under the moon or the reason the police and the journal purposely ignore vanishing people or acts of violence in the streets.

As everybody, you know that there's something bigger than just cash and drugs in the City. Unlike everybody, you are not afraid of it. You feel almost attracted to it.

You would call it a hunch. The same hunch you felt when you got the opportunity to put your hands on one of the Casino in the City, "recently vacated". The previous owner vanished without a trace and now is yours.

But first, told me about you. What did you do before?

[ ] Violence was your job. By gun or by knife, you took what you wanted. This Casino is of such things.

[ ] You were the mastermind behind a phone or a computer, giving orders and making sure that everything went according to your plan. This Casino is your last reward.

[ ] People didn't see you coming or leaving. You were like a ghost, getting information or breaking inside locked doors with ease. These were useful skill for getting this Casino.

[ ] A silver tongue opens many doors, but a golden one opens any door. You know what to say to people to make them tick as you wish or give what you desire. An example? This Casino.

[ ] You used your hunch in many ways. You were closer to the inexplicable things than many, always a step behind from understanding the bigger picture. But you have fragments of information and even if they were little things, they still hold power. You used them to get this Casino.

And what do you see when you look in the mirror?

[ ] Gender

[ ] Name

[ ] Physical description

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Hello! Just wait for me to threadmarks the posts that I need and then you can vote. Vote by plan only.

Quest Mechanics

Welcome here for this quest, hope you'll have as much fun as I hope to have.

So, learning from the mistakes of my previous quest, I decided to come beforehand with the mechanics, mostly based on my favourite RPGs (Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, City of Mists) and so on.

In this post, I'll explain the basic mechanics. Currently, they are not beta-tested, so I may change them if necessary.

Rolls and Clocks

Rolls and Clocks

The main elements of this game are the resolution mechanics. For each roll, I'll use 2d6 + stat modifier + trait bonus and each roll has an associate level of effect (how powerful the consequences will be) and a danger level (how dangerous are the consequence in case of failure).

You get pure success on a 10+, partial success (you achieve your main goal, but things get complicated or you get harmed) on a 7-9 and you get a fail on a 6-.

To account for ongoing events, long-term projects or anything I come up with, I use a clock system borrowed by BitD. Each clock has its length, its progression condition and the consequence when the clock continues. Information may be hidden, but discovered by investigating.

The level of effects are the following:

• Limited Effect: The action will result in small benefits or gains
• Standard Effect: The action will result in a considerable benefit or gain.
• Great Effect: The action will result in a major benefit or gain.

This means that different approaches can lead to different effects according to the narrative. Level of effects can be improved or decreased according to narrative, other actions or resolution of clocks.

The level of danger are the following:

• Low Risk: This action may cause small harm or losses.
• Risky: This action may cause harm or losses.
• Desperate: This action may cause severe harm or significant losses.

It's important to not mistake the danger level for the success chance: the success chance depends on the usual thresholds above, while the danger refers to how bad the results of a 6- or a 7-9 are on the character taking the action. As for level of effects, other actions, narrative and resolution may change the level of danger.

Rolls are rolled by users in the thread. If no one has rolled after 30 minutes, an user who has already rolled can roll again.

Stats

Stats

There are five stats and two clocks associated with your characters.

• Fist: The stat associated with violence, guns and brute strength (Think about Strength)
• Brain: The stat associated with planning, knowledge and being quick (Think about Intelligence)
• Shadow: The stat associated with stealth, trickery and being fast (Think about Dexterity)
• Tongue: The stat associated with persuading, bargaining and convincing (Think about Charisma)
• Occult: The stat that you use to work with forces that shouldn't be. (Self-explanatory)
• Health: How many injuries can you suffer before dying (Self-explanatory)
• Sanity: How much stress and physicological damage you can suffer before going mad (Self-explanatory)

Stats cannot be improved from the starting ones.

Traits

Traits

Traits are short keywords that provide advantages and fall under the following categories:

• Traits that enable particular actions.
• Traits that add a modifier to specific situations.
• Traits that represent some particular modifications

Basically, everything has traits: places, characters, weapons, and books. For objects, traits represent narrative modificators (in this type of game, narrative and mechanics are deeply connected, so a trait has both a meaning in the narration and a consequence in mechanics).
Traits can be acquired or lost according to some important events or during level-up. Not easy to grind for them, then.

Experience

There are three ways for a character to get an experience point:

• Rolling a 6- (failing an action)
• Rolling a Desperate action (max Danger Level)
• Fulfilling a long-term goal (usually resulting in an experience point for all characters in the organization).

Once a character has 5 experience points, he can choose an upgrade. An upgrade is usually a trait, an upgrade to an existing trait or a one-off reward.

Turn Phases

Turn Phases

The turn is made by four phases:

• Main Action Phase: The voting step, where you pick the actions you want to do this turn.
• Resolution Phase I: The step where the dice get rolled and action results get defined. Further voting can occur here according to the consequences of the actions.
• Resolution Phase II: The clocks that advance do so here and, if any concludes or triggers further consequences, further voting can occur.
• Ending Phase: New clocks get created, injuries heal, resources get updated and everything is ready for the next Turn.

To understand better when you get the effects of your actions so to plan in advance, here's a short scheme:
- Main Action Phase
- Resolution Phase I
- Character sheets get updated
- Resolution Phase II
- Clocks get resolved
- End Phase
- Character sheets get updated (Healing happens here)
- New Main Action Phase

Main Character

Main Character

The Main Character, the one you are going to play, has the following advantages compared to others:

• Higher stats
• More starting traits
• Two actions per turn

You have only one; if it dies, it's the end of this story.

Named Characters

Named Characters

A Named Character is a secondary character, with lower stats and traits compared to the Main Character and able to perform only one action per turn. They can be found in special circumstances, so don't expect to just go and get more of them.

Followers

Followers

At the bottom of the food chain, there are normal followers. Followers are treated as an indivisible group of people and they don't have stats, meaning that they roll low by themselves and it's a good idea to send them with a named character or the main character to take advantage of their stats. If necessary, they can act with one action per turn. It's easy to get more of them, but it's also easy to lose them.

Enemies

Enemies

Enemies respect partially the division "Main character, Named character and followers". You can expect each organization to have one Main-Character grade enemy that runs things and several Named Characters that work as second in command. Then you have the Followers that are at the bottom of the food chain. The number of traits, weapons and health points may change according to how strong their organization is.
Occult Entities may not respect completely this division due to their "particular nature".

Combat

Combat

Not all combats will be fought with the following rules, only main encounters. This is done to keep things as smooth as possible and don't bog down the quest with a large number of fights.

Each character (the Main Character, a Named Character or a group of Followers) has its weapon, present in its profile. A Weapon has a range (how far it may hit), a damage rating (how much damage it does) and further traits.

A Main Character has 10 health points (HP), a Named Character has 8 HP and a group of Followers has 6 HP.

Each wound until half of the HP of the character is considered a light wound and restores naturally at the rate of one at the End Phase of the next turn. Actions or resources can be spent to increase the number of wounds healed.

If the number of wounds exceeds half the HP of the character, the character is considered gravely wounded and gets -1 to all rolls, including those outside combat until they are healed back to light wounds. To heal grave wounds, it's necessary to spend actions or suitable resources at least to get back to more than half HP.

Followers are an exception: instead of being gravely wounded, they start dying down, meaning that more than healing them, you need to recruit them back to strength. The difference is mostly narrative, but mechanics and narrative are interconnected with each other in this type of quest.

Body armour can reduce damage dealt flatly. The max armour you can get is 2, but most protections are armour 1 with 2 being rare (and expensive to get).

Enemies don't have a turn to act: they have a weapon profile and HP, but they don't get to roll and inflict damage as a consequence of your actions (i.e. as a consequence of a partial result) in combat or a consequence of missed actions. If you attack someone in a way that it cannot fight back, you get no damage, but in active combat expect to hurt yourself. This means that flanking and surprise attacks are very useful.

The Casino

The Casino

Your Casino will be your first base of operations and your first source of revenue. Losing it wouldn't be directly a game over, but surely it will hurt and would make things extremely hard.

So it's in your interest to keep things working as smoothly as possible.

The Casino is connected to the following values:

• Net Funds: It's the number of funds you get every turn and it's the difference between the funds generated by the Casino and its expenses of it.
• Reputation: It's a value that goes from -3 to +3 and evaluates how famous (or infamous) your establishment is. It's used as a modifier for random event rolls.
• Staff: The number of followers working in it.

The Casino has a list of traits, which represent what rooms are in it and what it's their narrative effect. You can upgrade or add rooms and other functionalities as a long-term project.

[SLIDE title="Ending"]
You probably understood that there's something amiss in the City: if the fact that nobody remembers the proper name wasn't enough, the number of strange events you will encounter in the story will represent a tell.

There's something happening, that's what I'm telling you.
So, at the moment, this story can end in the following ways:

• This something is interrupted.
• This something is completed.

These two imply the resolution of the story of the City. These will change its face forever and you'll have to work to achieve the ending you want. There's always somebody with different ideas on how the story should end, isn't there?

• You Ascend.

For those that know the previous quest, this was the main win condition. It's kept in this remake, but it's not the only way to end the story. If you Ascend, your story in the City will end and another one will begin. But this story will end, nonetheless.

• You go mad or die in a ditch.

An ending I hope you want to avoid, but an ending the same.

The story we are here to tell is the story of Ernesto, a man in the City for potential to change things for the better or for the worse. When his story will end, so will this quest.

Clocks

Freeing the Monster (3/4): The Pale Zenith is planning to do something and your basement is part of it. You won't like it if they succeed.

He'll be back (2/(4-5)): Nathair won't be down forever. You are sure of this.

Reading "El Estafador" (0/2): You start reading a book.

Long Term Goals

Ready to Party!: You plan to get to +1 reputation and to have at least one Great Event. (Missing One Great Event)

No more in the dark: You plan to understand what is happening in the City and what are the relationships between your competitors.

Breaking the Axe: You plan to replace Nathir's Axe with a shovel so that he can dig his own grave. (Nathair is still alive).

Open the Eyes to Magic: You are on the edge of the occult world. Align yourself and discover one non-fundamental lore. (Ritual of Alignment not completed. Missing one Non Fundamental Lore at Rank 1)

Dramatis Personae

Okay, I hope to have reserved everything I need, you can vote. I'll close the vote ... in two days, I suppose.