Narrative Rules

Following are rules that help groups play out interesting stories.

Aspects

Aspects are short phrases that describe your character’s personality. Aspects are usually 2-5 words long, but they can be longer. Aspects have no direct mechanical effect, they’re more like a roleplay guide to help you flesh out your character. During a game, you can reference your aspects to help you decide what your character would do.

There are several broad categories of aspects. These categories have no mechanical effect, and aspects don’t have to fit into a single category.

  • Concept aspects are overall descriptions of your character’s personality. They can represent your character’s class or archetype, your profession, or your driving motives.
  • Trouble aspects are traits that can get your character into trouble. They can represent personality flaws, driven enemies, or just bad luck. Trouble aspects are especially useful for Setbacks.
  • Relationship aspects are emotional bonds between your character and other people in the game world. They can represent friendships, a role in an organization, or a personal idol.

Quests

The game is divided into quests, each of which has a single well-defined objective. Each quest has a current Challenge score, which usually starts at 1. When the party completes a quest, everyone gains XP equal to the quest’s Challenge score. A player character levels up whenever they reach a multiple of 10 XP.

Whenever the GM adds a complication to the quest, they should increase the Challenge by 1. Especially deadly complications might increase the Challenge by 2 or more.

The party can vote to spend 1 Challenge point to introduce a reasonable plot point that makes the quest easier, such as calling in allies to help, or adding a lucky coincidence that works in their favor. The GM determines whether a proposed plot point would be reasonable. Introducing a plot point can only trivialize the quest if it reduces the Challenge to 0.

Inspiration

Every player has a pool of inspiration points that they can spend to influence the story. You can spend a point of inspiration to reroll any die roll that any character makes. When you do, you must explain how your character somehow influences the roll. Even just yelling a few words of moral support counts.

You start every session with 1 inspiration point. Whenever the GM thinks a player did something cool or immersive, the GM should give that player a point of inspiration. You can also earn inspiration through Setbacks (see below). Unspent inspiration goes away at the end of a session.

Setbacks

In books, movies, and shows, we constantly see characters act against their best interests. This makes for interesting, realistic stories of complex, flawed characters. These self-imposed setbacks often act to reinforce the theme of a story. A comedy show relies on exagerrated, silly characters who make humorous mistakes. A grim drama relies on characters with emotional scars that flare up at the worst times.

Forge of Power encourages these stories by compensating players for in-character setbacks. At any time, a player can propose a Setback, explaining how a character might act in a way that makes the current quest harder for the entire party. The proposed action has to match the game’s theme: if you’re running a comedic game, the Setback must be humorous, or if you’re running a grimdark game, the Setback must be dark or hurtful. The proposed action must also directly relate to one of the character’s aspects.

The player who controls the character (or the GM, if the character is an NPC) can then choose to accept or reject the proposed Setback. If they accept the Setback, then the proposed action occurs in the game. Both the player who proposed the Setback and the player controlling the character gain 1 inspiration (if you Setback your own character, you gain 2 inspiration). The current quest’s Challenge score increases by 1.

Setbacks have a few limitations:

  • First, many Setbacks require an in-character action that can be blocked by other characters. For example, if the reckless character tries to charge into a fight, their party might grab them before they run off. If the action is blocked by other characters, the Setback is cancelled.
  • Second, the same character can’t cause a Setback twice in a row. (The same player can propose two Setbacks in a row, if they want.)
  • Third, you can’t Setback the same aspect twice in the same game session.